Though diminutive in scale, In Distress sounds a clarion call to recognize the shared perils of division. Susan fractures familiar emblems, allowing borders to buckle, colours to bleed and stars to fall from their ordered field. Painted in 1992 — another time of upheaval — the work speaks with renewed urgency: no nation remains whole when fear, self-interest and division overwhelm our responsibility for one another.
The title borrows the language of emergency — but a distress signal is also a call to those who can still respond. Its warning reaches beyond relations between nations: these same forces can fracture communities, families and friendships. When those around us struggle, will we recognize their peril as ours?
