‘Fake Tears’ is the most recent exhibition of the ‘Deep Trouble’ Series following ‘Deep Trouble’, ‘Deeper and More Troublesome’, and ‘A Routine Pattern of Troublesome Behaviour’. ‘Fake Tears’ highlights a fascination with and influence of the Hollywood film industry, the mainstream media, a culture of misinformation and conspiracy, and the governing political apparatus. My work begins with a series of 8x10 Polaroid prints, which are made through a process of cutting and registering stencils, in camera, and sequentially exposing the entire film, to engineer graphic and photographic illusions of space, form, and text. These laboriously crafted photographs subvert their own instantaneity and further the longstanding dialogue between the mediums of painting and photography. The medium of photography is quite effective and appropriate for constructing an illusion. Whereas Hollywood relies on a high production volume of sets, actors, extras, soundtrack, costume, and lighting, these photos operate by subverting the perceived reliability as a truthful medium. The photographs loosely adhere to a sequential narrative while each image stands alone as a stereotypical character type, allusion to plot, or scene. Through this series of works, and specifically through works like ‘Smoking Gun’, ‘Strange Bedfellows’, and ‘A God-like Figure’, I reflect on the current global state of tension across class, race, domestic terrorism, and religion, that is often manifested through the potent mixture of masculinity and violence.