“Domestic Tranquility”
Matthew Dutton
Artist Statement
Artist Statement
"Give them bread and circuses, and they will never revolt.” Juvenal’s warning feels less like ancient satire and more like a blueprint for modern governance. In Domestic Tranquility, the circus animals themselves become reassurance for the public, softened symbols meant to appease, to charm, to distract, so that the underlying systems of control can continue undisturbed. The work examines what happens when those in power learn that distraction is more effective than force, that comfort pacifies more quietly than fear, and that a smiling façade hides mechanisms of control far better than a clenched fist.
The works in this series, ferocious creatures rendered as circus performers, embody the quiet erosion of agency that occurs not through dramatic rupture but through gradual normalization. A snarling tiger draped in carnival blue, a reptile, toothy jaws opened wide, adorned with ornate ruffles, somber pink elephants labor under the weight of nonsensical authoritative clowns: each animal is trapped in a costume of delight, their wildness dressed as entertainment. Their expressions hold a tension between instinct and performance, threat and compliance. They are emblems of ferocity neutralized—danger made decorative –their spectacle functioning as a reassuring distraction that soothes the crowd even as it obscures the real power dynamics at play.
Against this backdrop, the circus becomes more than metaphor.
It becomes a model.
This work confronts the uneasy bargain embedded in the social contract. The Preamble’s promise to insure domestic tranquility suggests stability as a shared good, yet philosophers from Hobbes to Rousseau remind us that order can become a mechanism of control when institutions drift toward self-preservation. Today, we surrender different forms of freedom—attention, data, restlessness, autonomy—and receive in return curated comfort and predictable routine. The question lingers: Is this tranquility chosen, or engineered?
The circus offers a revealing parallel.
Domestic Tranquility asks viewers to consider how easily authority can choreograph a sense of peace, how quickly stability can become a performance, and how seamlessly comfort can become captivity.
In that arena, dangerous animals become compliant performers not solely through force, but through ritual: patterned behavior, repetition, reward, spectacle. A tiger’s roar becomes part of the choreography. An alligator’s bite becomes an act in the show. The clown’s smile becomes a mask that must never slip. The audience sees harmony; the performers know the cost. The animals’ very presence is a promise to the crowd, a reassuring show of controlled danger, designed to keep attention fixed on the ring while true power operates in the shadows.
Modern life operates on similar principles. Comfort becomes currency. Surveillance hides beneath the language of safety. Convenience is offered in exchange for attention, autonomy, or the right to simply question the systems that shape our reality. Digital noise softens critical thought. Political theater replaces political agency. We are told to relax, enjoy the show, and trust the ringmasters.
Foucault’s vision of internalized discipline, where people police themselves without needing coercion, resonates here. Huxley’s fear that pleasure, not pain, would be the ultimate tool of control feels less like fiction and more like forecast. Arendt’s reminder that thoughtlessness enables oppression becomes a warning as relevant now as ever. Together, they illuminate the central tension of Domestic Tranquility: that peace can become a façade, stability a performance, and comfort a subtle form of captivity. The spectacle of controlled ferocity is itself a tool of appeasement.
These works invite viewers to consider the psychological cost of this exchange. Humans, like animals, are wired to seek ease and predictability. Systems know this. They offer small rewards—algorithmic validation, frictionless convenience, the warm glow of entertainment—in return for deeper forms of quieting. We become willing participants in our own sedation… grateful for the circus even as it distracts us from the structures that limit us.
This series is not an accusation. It is a reminder.
As Mark Twain observed, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
This collection asks us to look closely—at the ruffled collars, the fixed smiles, the ferocity tamed by spectacle—and to recognize where tranquility ends and conditioning begins. It reassures us the way a circus does: by offering beauty, humor, and controlled danger, while quietly diverting our attention from the mechanisms that hold the reins. That beneath the ruffled collars and painted faces, beneath the choreography and the spectacle, something untamed still watches, and remembers.