words from the artist:

“I am a product of the Vietnam War. The more I dig into my family’s history, the deeper I get into how it began, the U.S involvement and the overall colonization of the Vietnamese which dates back to the Han Dynasty (111 BCE).

I couldn’t help but see some parallels of what is happening in Gaza to what happened during the Vietnam War which is what called me to create work about this.

Media has found ways to silence voices in order to portray other narratives. “Eat the Colonizer,” is a blue and white porcelain pot made to look like a cake referencing the trending phenomenon where people make hyper realistic cakes of other objects. In this case, I am making a pot look like a cake revealing a receipt of military expenses the U.S has provided Israel (what has been publicized so far.)

Like click bait, this pot is not what it seems. This is to critique social media’s content curation that limits and censors political content- a feature that some platforms pushed during the height of the genocide in

Gaza. The absurd amount of weapons that costs hundres of BILLIONS of dollars is possible with American tax dollars. I am once again ashamed of being a citizen in this country and have lost hope in our systems of government. Power is in the hands of the people, please keep donating, pushing Palestinian voices, don’t allow their lights to dim and CEASE FIRE.”

Receipt Transcription:

U.S Military Aid and Weapons

Ticket ID: 22565326

Customer: Israel

Date: 10 / 2023 - 05 / 2024

Item Quantity Cost

M795 155-millimeter artillery shells 52,229

M4 propelling charges 30,000

M107 155mm artillery ammunition 4,792

M830A1 120-mm tank rounds 13,981

Lines 1-4 Total $106,100,000

Iron Dome batteries 2x $200,000,000

Spice Bomb $320,000,000

Tank ammunition $700,000,000

Tactical vehicles $500,000,000

Mortar rounds $60,000,000

Boeing F-15 fighter aircraft 50x $18,000,000,000

2,000 pound bombs 1,800x $5,580,000

500 pound bombs 1,700x $2,550,000

Total $19,894,230,000

President Biden will aid military weapons to Israel under an Obama-era $38 billion aid agreement lasting until 2026.

Almost half of U.S discretionary spending is spent on the military ($752.6 billion in collected data from 2021).