"Goat Song No. 9: Dedication," 2024. Oil on canvas. 30" diameter.

About the work

This mocking portrait of the dictator Trujillo pairs him with the (Washington) monument he erected in his own honor in 1937. I use forced perspective to accentuate the twisted nature of that dedication. I makeTrujillo older than he was at the time, with one of his grandiose tricorn plumed hats. The monument, originally painted white, also contains an anachronism: colors that suggest the murals that would be painted on the structure much later, in honor of the Mirabal sisters, only the most famous of his many victims. I took the words around the circumference from a postage stamp issued at the time to commemorate the dedication of the monument on the first anniversary of Santo Domingo's renaming as "Trujillo City."