issue 6
// art
Title: Carry On // Artist: Chris Bettencourt
about the piece
| Linocut relief print, ink on paper. 12×12, edition of 25. “Carry On” examines the weaponization of endurance as social control. The solitary figure trudges through a hostile landscape. This is not resilience as empowerment, but resilience as sentence. The phrase “keep calm and carry on” has become a cultural mantra that asks us to endure our isms, our phobias, our violence, while maintaining composure. The figure in this print embodies that impossible mandate — trapped in perpetual motion through increasingly dangerous terrain, with no destination offered, only the obligation to continue. When there is nothing to move toward and no option but to move, carrying on reveals itself not as hope, but as the only response left to us. |
about the artist // Chris Bettencourt
| Chris Bettencourt is a St. Louis-based multidisciplinary artist, teacher, and community organizer with a residential history in post-industrial cities including Detroit, New Orleans, and Buffalo, and an extensive nomadic practice in the American West and Southwest. She returned to active art-making in 2024 after a long hiatus and has since exhibited widely, winning Best in Show at Art of Darkness at Soulard Art Gallery in St. Louis and Seven at Memento Mori in Denver, with work featured in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Her relief printing practice explores displacement, survival, and resilience — combining precise tooling and design with the democratic potential of the multiple. She also leads Pressing Matters, a community activist printmaking workshop series addressing urgent social justice issues, held at galleries, community spaces, and private venues across the region. |
Instagram: @chrisbettencourt_art
Website
wildscape. literary journal 