This piece responds to Derrida’s lecture The Beast and The Sovereign in context of the hypervisible space of the internet, and interprets social media as a sort of “island” on which one is alone and at the mercy of a cordoned-off world. It also considers the narratives that play into tourism and how the island still garners a sort of colonial fascination, which is escalated through travel content creators. The shadows of hidden figures traverse underneath a collage of images found under the broader search “island,” prompting a reconsideration of what goes unseen and what it truly means to be on an island.
The beasts are not alone (a partir de The Beast and The Sovereign, de Jacques Derrida)
Jace Hermanto
Risografía, chine-collé, láser y tipografía.
Tempe · EE. UU.
Procedimiento ·Risograph chine-collé on laser-cut black paper with printed handset type
Plegado · 22 × 32 cm cerrado
Desplegado · Díptico, 44 × 32 cm
2026
1/3
Jace Hermanto (he/they) is a multimedia artist who works in print, sculpture, and puppetry. Through myth-making and embodiment, their work questions the nature of power dynamics in searching for social change. Currently, they are examining the materiality/immateriality of shadow puppetry to speculate on the "iconification" of marginalized identity. Jace earned their BFA at the University of Tennessee in 2022 and is a current MFA candidate at Arizona State University. He is an art educator and “printer’s devil,” otherwise known as a research and printer’s assistant, at the Pyracantha Press. He has exhibited both across the U.S and internationally.