I explore the lies of empire, in particular the American empire, and I do that specifically through the context of trauma that is cached within and expressed through the body, transferred down generation to generation. I am seeking the underlying brutality and violence that afflict the participants in modern-day extreme capitalism and globalism. I focus on the physical gestures and the bodily shapes that we express, the ones that are similar and yet come from different circumstances. I am interested in how arms, legs, torsos, hand gestures, and facial expressions are similarly positioned, all of these shapes and forms expressing the emotional truth of the contemporary human condition. I sample my images from mass media like a hip-hop musician plucks sounds from the sources around them, images that inundate our everyday lives. I juxtapose these images so that we may see what lies behind them. I am focusing on these moments as a way to think about and understand, purely emotionally, who we are and what we endure at our own hands.