Transformer is honored to present 100% Pure Peace, a storefront video installation by DMV based artist Steven Ferri, as part of DC Art All Night. Set against the city’s unprecedented moment under federal occupation — when policing in Washington, DC is placing exceptional demands on the city government, residents, police officers, and the National Guard — 100% Pure Peace delivers its metaphor with striking poignancy.

The video depicts a toy soldier submerged in a mason jar as Amish honey is slowly poured in. As the golden liquid envelopes the figure, it overflows the jar and fills the frame, ultimately drowning out the soldier and the container itself. The work employs two contrasting symbols—the mass-produced toy soldier and the organic Amish honey—exploring the tensions between violence and pacifism, war and peace, and confrontation and surrender.

“As Washington, DC navigates the realities of federal control, Steven Ferri’s 100% Pure Peace reflects on the contradictions of power, pacification, and transformation. As a leading DC based artist-centered organization, Transformer is committed to amplifying emerging artists whose work sparks dialogue and challenges assumptions. 100% Pure Peace embodies that mission — inviting reflection on how power is exercised and the forces shaping our lives in real time.”
 – Victoria Reis, Transformer’s Founder, Executive & Artistic Director

By using honey—an element that preserves as much as it smothers—the piece explores the complexity of how societies negotiate survival and morality. The image of a toy soldier submerged in sweetness suggests that even ideals of peace can obscure, overwhelm, or silence. Yet, it also gestures toward the possibility of transformation, of violence being preserved in history rather than enacted in the present.

100% Pure Peace will be on a 24/7 continuous loop for sidewalk viewing September 13 - October 20, 2025.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Steven Ferri is a contemporary artist who works in painting, drawing, photography, and film. His work is characterized by an interest in the tools and techniques used in contemporary art combined with digital technology and filmmaking.

Ferri studied at the pioneering Center for Creative Imaging in Camden, Maine which brought together artists and experts like information design visionary Edward Tufte and graphic designer Milton Glaser, and at George Mason University and Georgetown University.

Ferri has exhibited at the D.C. Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA DC), the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the influential Henri Gallery, and other venues in the metropolitan Washington area and internationally. His work is held by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art in Washington and is in private collections.

Ferri lives and works in the Washington, DC region.