Janice Hathaway
Eternal Emperor
2023
Eternal Emperor is a relic of an idealized form—marble memory animated by appetite—with teeth exposed not as threat, but as truth. Victorian lace wraps like a second skin, disguising control as refinement as power speaks through ornamentation and restriction. Yet as memory, strings vibrate and bring an offering and a burden that reminds us that history hums even with silenced. An ancestral tension binds the emperor to perform as the harmony of the world sing through time as harmony.
Eight photographs were combined including an antique stringed instrument and lace from the Victoria and Albert Museum, a painted Greek figure, teeth from a fossil found in Alabama and nighttime traffic from the World Trade Center in New York.vThis work is digitally cut, blended, warped, painted, and transformed photography using Photoshop. The work is finalized as an archival 14” x 19” print and rematerialized into physical space.