Ellen C. Caldwell | ECLAIRE.me

When discussing such works, he said, “I don’t want to hit people so hard that they don’t respond.” So he doles out kernels of truth, wild imaginings, and pieces of fact and fiction laced with humor, expletives, and explosives, all in order to pull people in to look closer, to do their own research, to grapple with history’s gaping holes, and to make them laugh.

In bringing the uncertainty of the past, present, and future together within one portrait, he simultaneously questions and asserts agency over the validity of the historical narrative. For the individual viewer, this might personally challenge viewers to question how their stories will be told and recalled. More largely and philosophically, his work might encourage us to do as Alcocer suggests in altering the history and ideology of both the present and future.