this is when i love art (and this is when I don't)
Check out Bill Fisher and Richard Lou's "Missing Stereotypes" project about runaway race-baiter Jennifer Wilbanks @ http://billfisher.dreamhost.com/nohate.html. It's smart work that was censored courtesy of friends of the Wilbanks family. A comment on their site excerpted from a letter to the Gainseville Times:
I guess racism, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
Wow. Yeah, sure, racism is just like beauty—it's revered in this culture, and it's everywhere.
I've been having a related discussion with a couple of black students this semester whose fellow students refuse to discuss race in the context of their work. If there aren't "signs" of blackness, then they have no context for talking about race as it relates to their imagery or, my favorite, they tell them this discussion happened in the '90s—over and done with—move on (never mind these women were children then but, hey, they need to stop experiencing the world as black women!).
In other words, talk about nothing in your work (so popular these days) but don't talk about the R-word. No gallery will want you.
posted by Carla at 7:50 PM
1 Comments:
Thanks for the link about the censored art. I remember commenting when you blogged about Wilbanks right after her racist lie was exposed.
I'm saddened that the discussion of race is so verboten in just about every circle. It's insulting and appalling that the voices and experiences of these young black women are being denied and relegated to being a "past concern".
I'm glad that these students have you to speak to. I have no doubt that your presence in their lives will benefit them greatly as artists and as people.
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