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Art, Architecture and Design

Aisling Kernan ’26

A risograph-inspired print in a black frame illuminated with RGB LED lights, featuring the image of a TV that appears to move closer as the lights change color.
From Your Home (Silkscreen on paper)
Aisling Kernan portrait
Architecture

Aisling Kernan ’26

As the daughter of immigrants, I grow increasingly disappointed in this country I am supposed to be proud of as the Land of The Free continues to kidnap and imprison the people who most embody what America should be: united, diverse with pride, unashamed of humble beginnings and striving for more. 

This body of screen prints explores the idea of Liberty, and Justice for all in a country where kindness seems to dissipate. No longer the fictitious unchanging symbol of freedom and patriotism, to be American is, in reality, the daily negotiation with those in power to please be treated as a person, not a commodity. Liberty is seemingly only achieved through struggle, fighting those who have it to bestow it on them too. If it can be so freely given and taken away, was it ever really freedom? These works sit in the tension between promise, practice, and the ever-growing American emotions: fear, anger, revulsion. Mostly, these works depict America for what it is: a nation where capitalism markets freedom as a product while systematically exploiting the people it claims to empower, a country that teaches me to praise freedom while grinding my body, labor, and silence into profit, then dares to call my survival a privilege. To be American is to pay for your safety with your privacy in a country that uses your information to track you and kill you when you don’t conform. America is the land of watching from your living room as your government imprisons immigrants, builds walls, discriminates, and fosters hate, led by a 34-count convicted felon.
 

Purple-lit gallery wall featuring a framed fictional newspaper front page titled “THE SOCIETY,” alongside a mounted surveillance camera, evoking themes of surveillance, control, and media influence.
Everything Is Fine (Mixed-media)

 

I asked an AI chatbot to take the position of an AI journalist and write an article on modern society from the perspective of the oppressed. The generated article is unaltered.
 

Mixed-media artwork in a black frame illuminated with UV LED lights, featuring layered graffiti-style lettering, abstract telephone wire drawings, and neon red and blue UV reactive splatters.
Our Block (Mixed-media)

 

This piece was designed to capture the distrust in the government to protect and serve oppressed and underrepresented communities.
 

A risograph-inspired print in a black frame illuminated with RGB LED lights, featuring the image of a TV that appears to move closer as the lights change color.
From Your Home (Silkscreen on paper)

 

The inspiration for this piece was drawn from the persistent unease and fear that feels inescapable when the world is collapsing around you and privacy becomes nostalgic.