MaryHope Lee is a cultural worker and artivist, an artist with a cause;
I recently completed a virtual artist residency on Politics in Collage with the Kolaj Institute. During the residency, I began creating collages using starkly contrasting images to challenge the false sense of comfort capitalism creates and depends on to thrive and the complicity in which we are all implicated as guilty bystanders by our participation in this economic system. I wanted to create arresting and compelling images, both aesthetically and emotionally. My hope is that the viewer's reflexive response will become a reflection, and hopefully provide a moment for that person to see one's own self reflected in the image. I want to arouse the guilty bystander in all of us and make us more aware of, and hopefully shake us out of, our complicity. My work has appeared in Kolaj Magazine, Harpy Hybrid Review #3, and Superstition Review Issue 26.