Sellers

2017
Lead oil on canvas, mp3 audio (28 seconds)
136” x 84”
MP3
48s

Video courtesy of Sabrina Amrani Gallery

Sellers explores the convergence of propaganda, marketing, and psychological influence through an installation featuring an anamorphic portrait of Joseph Goebbels and an accompanying sound piece. This work highlights ideological parallels between Goebbels, the Third Reich’s Minister of Propaganda, and Edward Bernays, the American public relations pioneer and nephew of Sigmund Freud, underscoring their impact on mass persuasion.

The audio component features Thea Rasche, a 1920s German pilot and media sensation whose fame, cultivated by Bernays, promoted consumer ideals like “self-expression” through dress. This interplay between propaganda and consumer culture is further complicated by Goebbels’s distorted portrait, shifting with the viewer’s position to emphasize the subjectivity inherent in ideological influence. Sellers thus reflects on how modern consumer culture is deeply rooted in propaganda’s psychological tactics, prompting critical awareness of the persuasive power embedded in media.