Interference and a Tiny Spot of Hope

Interference and a Tiny Spot of Hope is a presentation of the past, present, and future. Akers combines flat imagery with illusionistic space to provide an immersive and yet open-ended experience into personal, historical, and cultural issues, such as identity, disruption, dislocation, and belonging. In his paintings, Akers uses Osage stories as metaphors over illustrations, and complexity over a singular, fixed interpretation. The most prominent figure in the painting, the suspended or falling elk, is an important figure in Osage cosmology and becomes a symbol to represent ideas of being between two worlds (Osage and non-Osage), and the precarious place of being between the earth and sky, a fundamental Osage principle of balance in the world.