Conversation About Social Justice: Part 2

Chair nr 38

Executive swivel chair with massage function and footstool; 122 in X 79 in; 2017; Sonia Barrett (14), sculptor. Accompanying sound, steering identities, heartbeats, gunshots (1 min. sound).

Chair nr 38 is a leatherette executive’s office chair with a footstool and massage function. It was developed using “performing furniture” to understand and undermine objectification. This is the first standing piece I made with a "face."

The foot of the swivel chair, like a car’s steering wheel, put me in mind of someone driving or steering their own identity because in this sculpture it serves as a face. The central part of this face has a barrel that reminded me of a gun and this, in turn, got me thinking about shooting identity, or which identities are more vulnerable than others.

I view this work as a layered metaphor for finding peace with who you are and attempting to secure and take control of your identity by wresting the steering wheel from a path of objectification.

This is also my first sculpture with an audible "voice." The massage function is concealed in the chest and has been altered in such a way as to make audible up to 14 different beats. These beats resemble a range of sounds from gunfire to a slow (or rapid) heartbeat. Both sounds reverberate from the chest.

Whilst it was not a conscious decision, I soon realized that drive-by shootings of Black people in the U.S. are being processed in this piece. The footstool that forms the hood of the figure has the text "footstool do not sit here" written on it. As "sitting" on Black individuals has resulted in some of the most shocking examples of recent police brutality. The figure is androgynous as victims are male, female, and trans. Some of the noises made are loud but many are low-level background noises that you really only notice when they stop. The figure hovers between a chair or thing, and then figure, depending on your viewing angle.

In order to end the conflict, a strategy could be to try to understand the other party (weaponized police and citizens that insist on shooting unarmed Black individuals) as fully as possible.

What is it that people see when they see a "black figure" and shoot? Could it be this animal, object, or figure with a loaded face?

A work just featuring a "loaded face" from this body of work was featured in contemporary and magazine.

Bltryae

Collage, paper; 8.5 in X 11 in; 2020; Laynie Browne (92, 16), poet.

Abolitionists in a Flood

From the series “John Brown's Vision on the Scaffold"; oil on canvas; 48 in X 69 in; 2019; Daniel Duford (18), painter. View a gallery talk by Daniel Duford below.

5/27/20

From the series “Diary of a Radio Junkie"; ink pen, gouache, watercolor, graphite on paper; 7.75 in X 6.5 in; 2020 (Peter Nobel Collection, Switzerland); Elise Engler (03, 17), painter.As U.S. deaths from coronavirus near 100,000, the Covid Racial Death Tracker shows Black people are dying at a rate nearly two times higher than the population as a whole, protests break out in Minneapolis after video of White police officer kneeling on head of Black man resulting in his death, 4 officers fired, In Central Park a White woman calls police on an African-American birder after he asked her to leash her dog.

Honor Indian Treaties

Screen-printed T-shirt; 12 in X 12 in; circa 1985; Thomas Matsuda (20), sculptor.Matsuda used to make T-shirt designs for Native American groups in San Francisco in the 1980s (Dennis Banks, AIM House Oakland, International Indian Treaty Council, Big Mountain).

same / cloth

Embroidered poem on cloth; 14 in X 26 in; 2018; Shin Yu Pai (03, 04, 11), poet. "same / cloth" was written on the subject of a hate crime that took place outside of Seattle in 2016. Use the button below to read the poem

slipstream (by the light of the moon),

White pigment ink/gouache on black clay board; 4 ft X 10 ft; 2018; 2018; Mary Ann Peters (10), painter; collection of the Portland Art Museum.Imagining the precarious experience of refugees crossing water in the dead of night, I made this work. It accompanies a series I have been doing called “this trembling turf.” All of my work in recent years and since my MacDowell residency is research-based and aligns with diaspora narratives of the Middle East, now, and at the turn of the 20th century. The title references the wake of a boat and also a secondary definition of slipstream, which means to be pulled along against one’s will.

Synagogue TZADIK

18th in a series of 22 studies; Jonathan Block Friedman (94, 09), architect. Watch the presentation video below.