Kill Devil Rum Labels, print run

I just finished a small print edition of rum bottle labels for an upcoming exhibition in June ("Commission for Treasonous Strategies" w/ Tesar Freeman). The labels will be applied to actual bottles in the exhibit, but it made sense while I was screenprinting them to run an edition as well.

I'm trying to get at some of the cynicism of contemporary alcohol marketing by linking trends in label designs to the history of alcohol as a key component in European and American colonialism. I pulled ideas from three main themes: the transportation of Africans to North America via the trans-Atlantic slave trade (Cap'n D'Wolf's Middle Passage Rum), indentured servitude of working class Europeans on both slavers and the ships of the Royal Navy (Press Gang Rum), and the use of alcohol in the subjugation of Indigenous American peoples (Treaty Rum, Walking Purchase Special Reserve).

These are available as a set on Justseeds here. Screenprinting was done with (once again) the generous help of cohort Mary Tremonte at the Braddock Neighborhood Print Shop.