Dangling Modifiers & Binding Lies
By Lurlynn Franklin and Lisa Williamson
The exhibit: As children we are not born racist. It is through our relationships with objects and people that we develop an understanding of ourselves and others. By carefully curating images and objects for display we are presenting invitations for you to examine these items through a new lens and contribute to the conversation. This exploratory piece is an opportunity to question power structures that create and perpetuate the messages that drive cultural ideology from the moment we are born. From aggressive marketing campaigns that feature characters like Aunt Jemima and the Gold Dust Twins, to Blacksploitation films that reinforce dangerous stereotypes, we encourage you to take a seat at the desk and reflect.
At two pedestals we have posited possible questions for contemplation, in addition we have included overt and covert symbols around the space for you to discover on your own. Some of these items are meant to amend notions of race and serve as counter-arguments. Some are meant to bolster positive affirmations of self. Are they successful? Unsuccessful? Why or why not? Take a leaf, write a thought, and add it to the tree so that we can begin to closely examine the various messages that play a role in the creation of our ideas on race and selfhood.
The performance: The performance aspect contains a poem and a response. In Africa before a slave was transported to America, they were forced to walk backwards around a tree as a symbolic ritual of forgetting personal history and lineage. Franklin’s poem addresses contemporary issues that continue to be bound by the past, while Williamson will perform the symbolic walk to represent white culture’s avoidance and “forgetting” of our country’s history of racial violence. What does the tree mean to you? As a living being, sometimes a stand-in for a physical body, often times planted in memoriam, the tree has also been a place of violence while having violent acts carried out against it in collaboration. How do we recover the symbol of a tree as life-giving?
As artists we have entered a social and creative contract with each other to be as real and fearless as possible with our conversations and approach to our work. This work is not a full conversation. It is only a beginning. Your contribution will inform our next pieces, and we hope that you gain from this process as equally an enriching experience as we have.
By Lurlynn Franklin and Lisa Williamson
The exhibit: As children we are not born racist. It is through our relationships with objects and people that we develop an understanding of ourselves and others. By carefully curating images and objects for display we are presenting invitations for you to examine these items through a new lens and contribute to the conversation. This exploratory piece is an opportunity to question power structures that create and perpetuate the messages that drive cultural ideology from the moment we are born. From aggressive marketing campaigns that feature characters like Aunt Jemima and the Gold Dust Twins, to Blacksploitation films that reinforce dangerous stereotypes, we encourage you to take a seat at the desk and reflect.
At two pedestals we have posited possible questions for contemplation, in addition we have included overt and covert symbols around the space for you to discover on your own. Some of these items are meant to amend notions of race and serve as counter-arguments. Some are meant to bolster positive affirmations of self. Are they successful? Unsuccessful? Why or why not? Take a leaf, write a thought, and add it to the tree so that we can begin to closely examine the various messages that play a role in the creation of our ideas on race and selfhood.
The performance: The performance aspect contains a poem and a response. In Africa before a slave was transported to America, they were forced to walk backwards around a tree as a symbolic ritual of forgetting personal history and lineage. Franklin’s poem addresses contemporary issues that continue to be bound by the past, while Williamson will perform the symbolic walk to represent white culture’s avoidance and “forgetting” of our country’s history of racial violence. What does the tree mean to you? As a living being, sometimes a stand-in for a physical body, often times planted in memoriam, the tree has also been a place of violence while having violent acts carried out against it in collaboration. How do we recover the symbol of a tree as life-giving?
As artists we have entered a social and creative contract with each other to be as real and fearless as possible with our conversations and approach to our work. This work is not a full conversation. It is only a beginning. Your contribution will inform our next pieces, and we hope that you gain from this process as equally an enriching experience as we have.
