American Burger is a burger sculpture with an inserted monitor playing a looped video of re-edited and appropriated scenes in which someone is featured biting into a burger in film/television. Growing up, most of the time I told somebody I was from Colombia, inevitably they would bring up either, Narcos, Shakira, or Cocaine. Occasionally Botero. I’m interested in media’s soft power, especially the unique position that the U.S. has with Hollywood for self representation on a global scale and how they choose to represent themselves. The more I looked into it the more I found references to immigrants learning to pronounce ‘burger’ or trying a burger for the first time, Americans assuming Mexican burgers are made of rat meat, an American ordering a burger before a mass shooting etc. I also noticed the pattern in which it was mostly men biting into burgers, unless it was an objectifying advertisement. In my time working in the film and TV industry I heard many rumors such as, many actresses, or their agents, explicitly state the actress is not allowed to be seen physically biting into food, whereas someone like Brad Pitt has the explicit request to be seen biting into something to accentuate his jawline. I’m drawn to the power of iconography and the use of found footage to look at how humor and play can be employed to explore the U.S.’s fascination with the burger and its relationship to power and gender. This stems from a critical look at structural patterns from a soft spot of my childhood. I learned English through movies, I love Hollywood, and I like to work from this place of complexity.