First Born |
mixed
media assemblage |
24" x 48" |
Daniel Wend
No
one gets to choose to whom, where, or when they are born. The
culture, the neighborhood,
the family, and the era that we are born into is what some would
refer to as a crap shoot. Life
rolls the dice and we find ourselves born into an impoverished
family in a drought-stricken
village in Sudan, or into a wealthy family of privelege in a Seattle
suburb. Our path through
life may be more predetermined by the circumstances of birth than
we might want to believe.
In the U.S., there are no guarantees of socioeconomic mobility
with only a 7.8% chance of
the bottom 20% of citizens reaching the top 20% by adulthood.
In America, men live to 76
years old on average, the average for women is 81. If you were
born into a family in a place
like Somalia, the average age of men at death is around 54, with
women averaging around 57.
This
artwork is a comment about the indeterminate life path we are
all subjected to as an
accident of birth.
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