2006.23, Phil Collins, becoming more like us, 2002

becoming more like us is part of a series of portraits taken in Serbia 2000-2001 following the NATO bombing and extradition of Milošević. In his practice, Phil Collins seeks to identify and consider ways specific cultural markers separate people and how self-identity is reconstituted especially following political conflict and war. As a name for a series, becoming more like us is ironic. Who is the us here? What exactly are our similarities?

The children in this photograph were part of a shoot for an iced-tea commercial. For Collins, the staging of this advertisement reveals how the collective commercial imagination is shaped. The children, who were “reimagined as spoiled American brats,” were asked to see an invisible, magical effervescence of the iced-tea careening around.

Anna Katherine Brodbeck, ed., TWO X TWO X TWENTY: Two Decades Supporting Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art), 2018, 88.

Until 2006: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, NY [1]

From 2006: Dallas Museum of Art, purchased from above

[1] See confidential folder of Collections Records Object File 2006.23

Apply to objects where number equals 2006.23