about the project

Cards, 2005
Siemon Allen’s installation is a presentation of a portion of his collection of military trading cards released in the United States between 1938 and 2003. The entire collection consists of more than 2,500 individual cards, including sets from the recent Afghanistan campaign (Enduring Freedom, 2001) as well as editions from the Cold War (Fight the Red Menace, 1951), the Korean War (Freedom’s War, 1950) and World War II (Uncle Sam/Home Defense, 1941). The display begins with the especially gory 1938 series Don’t Let It Happen Here and comes full circle to end with a very different but equally horrific 2003 edition of Don’t Let It Happen Here. This titular repetition underlines the fact that cultural misunderstandings accompanying current international wars are not historical anomalies—they exist along a continuum of American prejudice and propaganda, the overwhelming breadth of which is embodied by the expanse of trading cards arrayed on the gallery walls.

about Siemon Allen
Siemon Allen is a South African artist who currently lives and works in the United States. His recent installations or "collection projects" include the display of multiple historical artifacts in which he explores and explodes issues of identity and branding. His current investigations include two epic sound collection projects, one mapping the history of the work of Miriam Makeba, the other a web-based archive of South African audio. While in South Africa, Allen was a founding member of the FLAT gallery, an artist’s initiative that operated in Durban from 1993 to 1995. His work was included in the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale as part of the exhibition Graft and also in the Vita 93 and Vita 98 exhibitions. In 2001, Stamp Collection—an ongoing collection of South African stamps and a research project into South African history—was presented at the Renaissance Society in Chicago; Artists Space in New York City and the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington, DC. His second collection project, Newspapers, was included in the exhibition The American Effect at the Whitney Museum in New York City, as well as A Fiction of Authenticity at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. Allen’s other work employs cut-up collage techniques using comics such as Tintin and has been shown in Art Positions at Basel: Miami Beach and at The Project in Los Angeles. In 2005 Allen presented his third collection project, Cards, in the exhibition Patriot at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore and later in the exhibition Enemy at Momenta in Brooklyn, New York.

For more information, please visit www.siemonallen.org.