Hyeweon Park

The Legacy of Pax Americana

In the United States, Spam is considered inexpensive processed meat. In South Korea, however, where American military forces have long been stationed, it remains a premium gift exchanged during major holidays. My work, The Legacy of Pax Americana, uses the visual language of contemporary still life photography to examine this contradiction in everyday life.The phrases printed along the base of the can — Chopped Freedom and Fake Democracy and Pax Americana — directly name the overwhelming reach of American power and the fiction concealed beneath it. The rice stacked like a tower on top of the can goes beyond mere food: it becomes a symbol of Korea's strange, precarious coexistence — situated under the weight of American imperial influence, embodied by the Spam can, yet living inside a culture that treats that very influence as something worth celebrating. By reconstructing familiar photographic elements, the work asks us to look past what we consume without question and confront the larger structures of power that shape our daily lives.