The 51st State
This project takes the form of a fictional newspaper—an object that pretends to inform, yet quietly distorts. Through hand-drawn illustrations, manipulated headlines, and imagined narratives, I explore the absurdity and violence behind cultural erasure, colonization, and media framing.
What begins as a satirical take on the idea of Canada becoming the “51st state” gradually unfolds into a deeper reflection on Indigenous displacement, historical amnesia, and the soft power of cultural imperialism. The visuals borrow the language of news, but resist its authority, allowing illustration to interrupt, subvert, and reframe the familiar.
I am interested in how storytelling—especially when disguised as fact—shapes public memory. In this work, I use irony and visual contradiction to ask: who gets to write history? And what happens when it’s drawn instead?
