Where you are right now is only half the story. This is only half the installation. One half takes place at the Skyway Central Station at Pearl and Bay and the other half takes place at nullspace gallery at 108 E. Adams St. Simultaneously but distinct. Connected in time, separated by space. It is about fracture and division.

On the platform of the Skyway station, you are met by jubilant well-wishers! “Welcome home”, they shout. There are noisemakers and singing and joy in the air. There are colorful signs to greet you and make you feel at home. Home free. But there is something amiss. One of the signs, spray painted like graffiti, points to the presence of an invisible subgroup, struggling to make itself heard, aching for identity and recognition. The hand held signs, with their gradient color background allude to the signs held by the followers of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, an anti-gay hate group which pickets the funerals of soldiers and believes that God hates America for its immoral ways. The Skyway itself, stands for American optimism, a railway for the future, like the one at Disney, full of pride and promise, from a past which held that technology would make our lives comfortable, leisure-filled and safe. Home Free.

Across town and out of sight of the Skyway station, the video installation at nullspace presents a peek into the life of Tony Campbell, a Vietnam veteran and widower with a history of poverty and substance abuse, who finds himself living on our streets, Home Free, as it were. His candid depiction of that life shown in one gallery window is contrasted with the black and white video in the other, where white suburbanites build homes and play with their children. This disconcerting juxtaposition conjures up an image of two distinct Americas, one bright-eyed and bushy, the other downtrodden. Like at the Skyway station, a subgroup we prefer remain invisible, the homeless, injects itself onto the stage of our mythical homeland. “Welcome Home”, cheers the crowd on the platform, two words Tony Campbell will never hear.

nullspace gallery and Central Skyway Station at Pearl and Bay – Dec 1 – 5 to 9 pm

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