2023-2024
Inkjet prints on photo paper, wood panel, steel sheets, aerosol paint, acrylic paint, laser level, hand mirror
66 x 8 x 72 in.
This work is dedicated to Tay K, In An excerpt from the exhibition text
“The exhibition title itself comes from the Cities Aviv track “To Dream of Smoke”, opening with a monologue describing a fictional character, “Joshua”, that is meant to encompass all the different black boys who resort to less-than-legal means of advancing their position in society, at an attempt to re-humanize the perception young black men in the street, the very peoples that hip hop itself came from.
This theme is exemplified by the presence in the show of Tay K, a then teen rapper that rose to internet fame with his viral music video “The Race”, shot while on the run for capital murder charges. He was Painted as a boogie man in the media, and teenage me believed it. Till I learned his story, born into a cycle of violence and struggle that I’ve seen claim many kids I grew up with. A hard to escape cycle that sets you up to fail from day one. How much can we judge the actions of a child fighting for survival, what if instead of just punishing him, we punished the society that failed him? The installation features one of his first pictures from jail at the start of his 55 year sentence; the post sat at 1 million likes, next to an image of the platinum certification for his song having sold a million copies. It begs the question how many people that pressed play even knew anything about him, and if they did, did they even care?”