Nicholas Galanin’s White Noise American Prayer Rug references the pervasive global history of whitewashing or masking the uncomfortable, unsavory, and undesirable, as well as the xenophobic cacophony currently filling the American airspace. “This white noise is produced by a kind of whiteness based on more than complexion—based on capital, blind belief, and faith in itself, and fear of everything outside the lines it draws to enforce inclusion or exclusion under its laws,” says Galanin. “This is the American prayer rug, a reflection of an image accompanying a droning sound to distract us from our own suffering, from love, from land, from water, from connection; there is no space for prayer, only noise.”
