“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

-Dwight D. Eisenhower Jan. 17, 1961

In 2007, the amount of money labeled 'wasted' or 'lost' in Iraq ($11 billion) could pay 220,000 teachers’ salaries.  In 2008, the Pentagon spent more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earned in a year. Roughly 50,000 veterans are homeless on any given night.  In 2013, the United States Department of Veteran’s Affairs released a study that covered suicides from 1999 to 2010, which showed that roughly 22 veterans were committing suicide per day, or one every 65 minutes.  A new report by the Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival, and the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War states “at least 1.3 million lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone since the onset of the war following September 11, 2001.”

The Boomba series is a satirical commentary on the industrial military complex. A circus-like color palette adorns the surfaces and the cartoonish forms are overgeneralized to reference the absurdity that war can be. In seeking to create a catalyst for dialogue, this work alludes to the spin, the fear inducing rhetoric, and the surreptitiousness that accompanies, and most of the time dominates, the discourse on the subject, which often leads to misguided patriotism.