Rafi Jacobs

Visual Art – Chicago

Primarily working in photography and video, my aesthetic draws on tableaux and documentary conventions while candidly scrutinizing the white-collar suburban culture in which I grew up. Pervasive in this environment is competitiveness, peer judgment and ridicule. Residing in this culture’s line of fire, I investigate the subversion of socially normative behavior like drug addiction, the abject, and heterosexuality as it is constructed by pornography while probing the realms of class, religion and family. By questioning the status quo, I initiate dialog regarding issues experienced by many but commonly suppressed.