Size: 120 x 180 cm Media & Materials: Oil Painting, Acrylic Painting, Digital Printmaking, Stencil

Description: A white horse rearing up attempts to break away from the crowd below. At the bottom lies a digital printmaking rendition of the Nine Circles of Hell (Dante’s Inferno), while above lies Mount Purgatory (Dante’s Purgatorio) as a leaning tower. Inspired by Domenico Tiepolo’s “The Procession of the Trojan Horse in Troy” (1773), the artwork depicts the Trojan horse as a symbol of Western imperialism in the Global South, subjugating others in its path. Analogous to how the Trojan Horse is an allegory for external subversion in Virgil’s “Aeneid,” the horse in the painting is emblematic of European powers’s civilizing mission (“la mission civilisatrice”). Rooted in classical antiquity, the civilizing mission embodies the insidious nature of imperial conquest cloaked under the guise of benevolence. Within this work, I amalgamated printmaking and stenciling techniques with oil and acrylic painting while also employing chiaroscuro techniques, bringing the horse to the fore. The stark contrast between light and dark evokes drama and tension, while the golden ratio around the horse’s frame directs the audience’s attention toward its charge.

Biography: Thai (Travis) Hong Pham (he/him/his) is a first-year student at Johns Hopkins University pursuing a double major in Sociology and Classics. A candidate for the Woodrow Wilson Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Travis is interested in classical reception and its implications for imperialism, racism, and eurocentrism, as well as cultural reclamation and decolonial justice.