ARTWORK:

Panoptic Series

This painting is based on Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon”, created in 1791. His architectural drawing proposed a radical new prison design in which the prisoner’s behavior would become self-regulating due to the potential for constant unseen surveillance. The “panopticon” was later invoked by Michel Foucault in his book Discipline and Punish, as a metaphor for modern disciplinary societies and the pervasive inclination to observe and normalize.

I have infused Bentham’s schematics with vibrant color schemes to reemphasize how metaphors can come to life, also infusing it with subtle references to religious architectural elements to abstractly illustrate the ways in which the panoptic aspect of early US penitentiaries became architectural representations of Christian panopticism as they developed further from Bentham’s model.