Mark A. Blanchard (b. 1991) is an American artist based in Chicago. His work engages in the pursuit of our personal liberation; it is a liberation dependent on the realization of the context of our own existence. He uses art to critique the ways in which we think about our essential selves. Are you defined by the re-presentations that exist in your language or culture? Is your identity shaped by history and the legacy of ancestors who came before you? Is the essential being defined by the physical matter which surrounds and composes us? Or perhaps the integrity of our being is enabled by that universe which hides behind the horizon. His subjects represent a dual consciousness struggling to become one as they construct a contemporary photographic tableau.