…Or does it explode?

About the Project 

A wry smiling teen-age boy on a vibrant yellow background grabs your attention. Next to him is a portrait of a strong young woman, full of potential. Their voices speak to you. Their placement is tragically wrong—unexpected. They are horizontal to the ground, coffin like. There is an uneasy tension between the illuminated life-sized photographs of 12 Philadelphia youth and their presentation. The soundscape heightens this friction: the collection of voices articulate their dreams and reveal obstacles and challenges to those aspirations. “My dream is to be a social worker. That’s my dream… I’m not going to go to college because it would be too hard for me.” It mirrors the lives of so many youth whose promise is squandered and often suppressed. …Or Does it Explode? is part lament, part indictment of a society that hasn’t done better for our youth, part hope embodied in the faces and aspirations of the adolescents. The work reveals a potentially explosive contradiction. Viewers confront the faces, full of life and beauty as well as their insight and hopes and must position themselves in relation to the future that is being buried.