Sienna DeGovia uses the potent symbology of American ephemera, carnival games, and comestibles to illustrate the ravenous nature of American consumption and the endless quest for satiety physical and spiritual.

The types and quantities of food prevalent in the immoderate excesses of the American diet as well as the seemingly innumerable weapons we have access to, together as emblems of Americana, speak to the endemic sense of entitlement we feel to have anything and everything we want, at any time, immediately. Believing that the very founding of our country, and therefore the root of our American identity, is steeped in this sense of entitlement and the use of force to take what we desire, DeGovia creates pieces to address these excesses.

While early work focused solely on the idea of personal consumption, nostalgia, and fitting into acceptable societal standards of beauty and femininity, Sienna grew to consider the uniquely American ability to cross and confuse desire and physical need, highlighting the impossibility of distinguishing between the two. There must always be something new to want and we must never be told we can’t have it.

Much of her recent work is the result of experiencing the weight of responsibility precipitated by motherhood. Is it possible to undo or at least influence the next generation in the right direction while also wrestling with the ever-present specter of potential loss threatened by raising a child in what feels like the violent culmination of a country founded on the myth of white exceptionalism?