Weapons of Mass Deconstruction

A group show of work made by
Chambit, @chamb1t
Cushla Clark, @cushlacushla
Emi, @mscrylady
Brandi Divine, @hernamesbrandi
Matthew Tully Dugan, @tullydeluxe
Katya Austin, @k.atastrophic

As curator, Katya started each day of the residency with writing prompts made to inspire an exploration of each artist’s relationship to their idea of nation in light of the United States 250th anniversary. Acknowledging that the nation was born from a group of individuals that came together and made a constitution based on their values and ideals which have come to impact the trajectory of the entire planet’s socio-economic and political reality.

At this 250th anniversary we find ourself in tumultuous times, undergoing what can only be described as a massive shift. This residency and the show that sprang from it is a celebration of the power that individuals have when they put their minds and effort into creating something together. Through the work, the hope was to help the artist’s hone their skills and the embodied impact of their craft into becoming a weapon, not of mass destruction but of mass deconstruction.

Each artist was free to choose their own medium and come to their own conclusions. The show is a mix of sculptural installation made of objects found locally, site specific performance inspired by the character of and characters found in Rochester, painting, drawing, photography, and zines.

The show can be seen for the entire month of July at Subsector @subsectorltd on 173 State St, Rochester, NY daily from 1-7

Chambit

Dreamliner 301, 2026

Found object sculpture made of materials sourced throughout Rochester with a quote by Frederick Douglas etched into the chamber that reads “I prayed for 20 years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

Cushla Clark

Baby There Is No Plane, 2026

A scene recreated from memory of a family in the rural South. The missing door hints that the mortgage owns the house, not the family. The empty driveway suggests what has already been repossessed. The American Dream is purchased on Visa and Mastercard. Swipe, swipe! Debt becomes inheritance, and American capitalism functions not as a mode of economic mobility but as a weapon of economic immobility.

Emi

Must Be Seen To Be Understood, 2026

48-Star American flag, wooden planks, Polaroid film, wooden branches

Emi - Must Be Seen To Be Understood (2026) 48-Star American flag, wooden pallets, silver barbed wire, Polaroid film, wooden branches

American girls must be seen to be understood.

When promises have broken down, we find the

body left in the cemetery.

The flag is our bed in which we will lie, free forever.

America is sacred, and terminal.

Innocence obsessed.

We are consumers.

Weapons of beauty.

Violence.

Resurrection.

Reinvention.

There is no prescription for loneliness.

For fear.

For death.

We are mourning our own mythology.

Built on power and surrender.

Power and surrender.

Power and surrender.

The green, green grass of home...

The American Dream apologizes.

But it never takes it back.

Matthew Tully Dugan

Font Hill, 2026

Handmade willow charcoal on paper

24 x 32 inches

Matthew Tully Dugan

In the End, 2026

Vinyl on aluminum stretcher, bone

30 x 70 inches

Matthew Tully Dugan

Drawings 1-7, 2026

Handmade willow charcoal on paper

Each day of the WMD residency, Katya gave the residents a writing prompt to reflect on the broader concept of America and what its fundamental ideals are and how they relate to our sense of a Nation. In deconstructing these philosophies we began to form manifesto style critiques or architectural outlines to investigate new ways of being, asking ourselves what we prioritize in our lives and in society as a whole. These reformulated ideas act as weapons that disarm or realign preconceived notions of freedom and question our own aspirations within that system, with a particular interest in the way art functions as a subversive act of war within culture.

In my responses I continued to think of the precolonial state of any land where nature reigns supreme as both provider and foe, leading us to establish order to both optimize our access to natural resources and maintain a barrier that protects us from the elements that seek to wipe us out like a divine form of Darwinian reconstitution.

Over the week I had daily plein air drawing sessions (using charcoal made from a downed willow in Highland park) in several of Rochester’s dense old growth forests as well as in my childhood home’s backyard and neighborhood where i studied the moon and trees that make up the stark and cinematic scenes from my youth and recent past. In the night the group would gather and make a short pilgrimage to a favorite plot in Home Acres known as Font Hill. Here we found a flourish of Boletus edulis whose glossy copper caps could be easily distinguished as they reflected the moonlight. I foraged and cooked the earthy bounty and fed the group with our findings, bringing the nature of our experience here full circle being fed from the lands as they attempt to reclaim their sensitive ecosystem.

Brandi Divine

The Vessel of Rochester: A Fourth of July Broadcast

Immersive performance and live poetry

For one week, I have been trying to let Rochester enter my body without rushing to understand it.

I came here with the private wish to become porous. To be a sponge, perhaps. To be rinsed by what I did not yet know how to name. Instead, the city entered in pieces: church basements, wet pavement, a river with its mouth open, a Wegmans run, a lonely radio, a joke told with the tenderness of survival.

I wrote: the jailhouses have been disguised as a church. I wrote: this day has not been lived before, so don’t live it like yesterday. I do not know if these are prayers or warnings. I think they are both.

Tonight I move through Rochester in borrowed skins not to impersonate it but to listen with my whole body. The new girl. The witness. The woman with static in her throat. The firework that does not know whether it is celebration or distress signal.

A city is not a place. It is a feeling that has learned how to build streets around itself.

There are poems here for sale, trade, confession, or one true sentence. I will hold what you offer me with both hands. I will listen for where it is trying to go. I will write until the sentence becomes a small door and something in you recognizes itself on the other side of it.

Tonight I am only the vessel.

What comes through belongs to God, to Rochester, to the dead, to the living, and to whoever is brave enough to be changed in public.

Katya Austin

UPLOAD: I Love My Algorithm Zine, 2026

A More Perfect Union Zine, 2026

Living Constitution Website, 2026

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