How is one to visualize social emancipation, particularly in geographies of indignation, injustice, and oppression? Insidious Imperial Insignia examines bereavement and the irony of how military forces seem to serve the ruling class rather than the one they are meant to protect—the people. In Dayrit’s hands, art is folk and activist in a contemporary sense: it carries remnants of the past into the future.

Kenneth Paranada