Red, White, Black and Blue: The Revenge of Billy Jack

• Photographer
  Kerry Skarbakka, United States

Visual artist, Kerry Skarbakka’s practice lies at the intersection of
performance art and staged photography. Over the past thirteen
years, he has used his body as a physical metaphor, a figurative
representation of the fragilities and the environmental pitfalls of
the human condition. In a new body of work, "Red, White, Black
and Blue: The Revenge of Billy Jack", Skarbakka draws from his
experience of living in the Southwest United States, while serving
as Faculty at Prescott College in Northern Arizona from 2011-
2014. In this new series, Skarbakka taps directly into the cinematic
nature of his artwork. Inspired by the action film Billy Jack,
originally filmed at the Court House Square in Historic Downtown
Prescott in the early 1970’s, Skarbakka provides an experimental
narrative on the famous fight scene, where Billy Jack defends the
students of the Freedom School from the local conservative. In a
world that appears increasingly drawn on ideological extremes,
where there is only right or wrong, black or white, Skarbakka’s
hyperbolic re-creation of Billy Jack’s return, alludes to our inherent
combative nature the divisiveness of our current state.