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Artist Statement by Vanessa Compton

‘I identify this body of work as Nouveau Western. The traditional Western genre feels like the same story over and over again. Stories written for the male gaze with female characters designed to attract that voyeuristic male gaze. Stories that perpetuate the idea of regeneration thru violence and that masculinity has to be re-enforced by constant violence. Stories with heavy handed notions of freedom and unfreedom. Stories of liberal individualism which assume that the conditions of the Western frontier make everyone equal. Though I have most definitely …