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(Preliminary) Exhibition Statement Abstract

10/31/2021

Experiences growing up predominantly in the complex urban environment of New York City while also having lived in D.C., Miami, Chicago, Denver, and Dallas, inform my work for the e/Mergence installation. Economic, social, and political disparities between so-called black and white communities are profound and apparent. The e/Mergence installation hopes to provoke questions about the status of African-Americans in the context of American society and politics to confront marginalization, civil and social injustice, and the absence of adequate economic or political power within a society that professes a foundation of egalitarianism.

My work for this exhibition includes abstraction and surrealism to express humanity. It also brings into question the mergence of perceptions about African-Americans with news and entertainment media propagated and perpetuated stereotypes and misrepresentations and the powerlessness embedded in American society's systems. I am using a fundamental form that carries with it some inherent perceptions about its stability and its power. The pyramid has a long history of conversation regarding its inherent power and the symbological power and structure that it lends when applied metaphorically in analysis and rhetoric.

In his article, Deconstructing the Pyramid of Prejudice, author David Light Shields defines that the pyramid has its power in its structure; the pyramid's base provides stability. The base of the pyramid represents the many in a group. Though they may perpetuate bigotry and intolerance, their acts are often minimized. On the other hand, their position in the scheme supports actors higher in the pyramid architecture (Shields 2014, 22). I am employing the form using a variety of material in sculptural design and combining it with video to represent the physical and intangible together.

References
Shields, David Light. “Deconstructing the Pyramid of Prejudice.” Phi Delta Kappan 95, no. 6 (2014): 20–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172171409500605.

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Other Artist's Statements

10/14/2021

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As we grow in our ability as artists, we also work toward expanding our ability to speak about our work. Toward that goal, I've collected statements made by or on behalf of 5 of my favorite contemporary artists:

Kara Walker

Elisabeth Charlotte Rist, better know as Pipilotti Rist is a Swiss visual artist who works with video, film, and moving images which are often displayed as projections. Since her childhood, she has been nicknamed Pipilotti after the character from the novel Pippi Longstocking, by Astrid Lindgren. She believes that art should encourage the mind, destroys prejudices, and create positive energy. Her work is mostly related to gender, sexuality, and the human body. We can say she is a pioneer of moving-image art.

Bill Viola is internationally recognized as one of today’s leading artists. He has been instrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art, and in so doing has helped to greatly expand its scope in terms of technology, content, and historical reach. For over 35 years he has created videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environments, electronic music performances, flat panel video pieces, and works for television broadcast. Viola’s video installations—total environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound—employ state-of-the-art technologies and are distinguished by their precision and direct simplicity. They are shown in museums and galleries worldwide and are found in many distinguished collections. His single channel videotapes have been widely broadcast and presented cinematically, while his writings have been extensively published, and translated for international readers. Viola uses video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism. Using the inner language of subjective thoughts and collective memories, his videos communicate to a wide audience, allowing viewers to experience the work directly, and in their own personal way

The works of Martin Puryear emit a sort of aesthetic gravity. They attract our attention with their presence, pulling us toward them with implicit promises of beauty, comfort, and after looking at them for a while, even understanding. Born in 1941, Puryear has been making things with his hand since he was a child. He can build a guitar or a boat by hand. He works in upstate New York in a studio that he built himself, often using natural materials for which he foraged, shaped with tools that he made. The hand made aspect of his sculptures has earned Puryear the reputation of being a true artisan: someone devoted to the traditions of craftwork, who is deserving of the reverence such difficult work commands. But it is his ability to project the universalities contained within the objects he makes that has earned him the reputation of being one of the greatest living artists in the United States. Many of his works are untitled and considered abstract, but their essence is unmistakable.

Carrie Mae Weems: Concerned with stepping out of the gallery and interested in reaching a broader public, what started as the naming of a flower for Du Bois has blossomed into A Proposal for The Du Bois Memorial Garden. For their project, visual artist Carrie Mae Weems and landscape architect Walter Hood have created a proposal for the design of a Du Bois Memorial Garden on the campus of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In this exhibition they consider the planned site, its surrounding landscape, and its meaning. Consisting of drawings, large-scale photographs, small floral studies, and a video projection, the project suggests the possible directions for the final garden and considers types of gardens: formal, casual, floral, sculptural, and even vertical gardens. While Weems made the photographs and crafted the video projection based on Du Bois’s trip to China, Hood produced a series of imaginative drawings invoking the possible aesthetic dimensions of a contemplative garden space. Working closely with Hollingsworth Farms and the American Peony Society, Weems has named a new variety of peony in honor of Du Bois. This flower, which she calls the Peony of Hope, will anchor the garden. It will become available to the general public in September 2013, thereby allowing thousands of garden enthusiasts to engage in a lasting and sustained memory of Du Bois.

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(Preliminary) Exhibition Statement Abstract

Other Artist's Statements

Rob J Phillips

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