We Are the Real You

We Are the Real You is an ongoing project exploring rural space and cultural identity. Over the past two decades, there has been a resurgence in Western cultures to single out rural communities and the people who live there as more real and of higher value than their urban counterparts.

There is also the tendency in urbanizing communities to call back to their historically rural roots. This can take the form of murals, historical parks, or other symbolically weighted iconography that seeks to tie a rapidly shifting landscape to a deeper reality.

This project questions many of these underlying assumptions through a presentation of these physical and intangible spaces that addresses their complexities as cultural constructs.