Ryan Mitchell

“Thank You, For Your Service?” explores memory culminating in frustration, anger, and violence, which led to emotional withdrawal and physical stress from my military service experiences. I work with the 4x6 photographs taken on deployments during my four years in the Marines, utilizing collage techniques to express the fragmentation of self that is a result of these memories. These recollections are a view into goals never achieved, training for a war that I never saw, the transitional phase of being thrown back into civilian life, and the haunting regret and self-doubt while seeking new potential and purpose.

The collages are constructed with fragments from the textures and scenes soldiers are surrounded by -- weapons, fatigues, helmets, the desert. I create small and sometimes miniature scale works. It is an emphasis of not only a contrast in lack of control I felt while serving but the shame I feel in not being able to see what is considered the pinnacle of a soldier's duty: experiencing combat. This creates a sense of preciousness and materiality within me that reminds me that I did serve honorably. Second, the labor used in making these works serves, as a therapeutic way, to address and critique the hidden desires I wanted to experience, such as protecting my country through combat. I am using these objects or photographs to create a sense of acceptance of those themes. The glorification of killing another human being and acting as a destructive force of nature that is falsely praised.