WHAT CAN I SAY? (At Mesa Contemporary Art)
Click on each image for enlargement and description.
Click on each image for enlargement and description.
What Can I Say? - was originally scheduled as a three person show with Chris Jagmin and Safwat Saleem in March of 2020, only to be cancelled as so many shows were, as we all began to experience the global pandemic of Covid-19. Our thematic approach to this show was prophetic as the extraordinary events of 2020 continued to unfold. As a result of this cancellation, these works were first exhibited at Mesa Contemporary Art in late 2020/early 2021. Here is the original statement written a year earlier.
Of late, I've felt called to look at the roots of my own white privilege. What cues and assumptions indoctrinated my own habits as a person born with white skin? I began to think about the invisible, insidious cues that were planted in my early life. What were the subtle messages that were ingrained in my own psyche - all working to assure the maintenance of our hold on the white structure in this country? I began to think about words that I grew up with - rhymes, lyrics, pledges. I thought about images in my own home - food packaging, table linens, religious icons - innocently employed, but damaging all the same. The work I created attempts to visually layer these cues - mimicking the confusion of these impressions that still float around in my mind and body.
Shown at Mesa Contemporary Art - December 18, 2020 - March 28, 2021
Of late, I've felt called to look at the roots of my own white privilege. What cues and assumptions indoctrinated my own habits as a person born with white skin? I began to think about the invisible, insidious cues that were planted in my early life. What were the subtle messages that were ingrained in my own psyche - all working to assure the maintenance of our hold on the white structure in this country? I began to think about words that I grew up with - rhymes, lyrics, pledges. I thought about images in my own home - food packaging, table linens, religious icons - innocently employed, but damaging all the same. The work I created attempts to visually layer these cues - mimicking the confusion of these impressions that still float around in my mind and body.
Shown at Mesa Contemporary Art - December 18, 2020 - March 28, 2021