May 23 - June 22, 2025
Förderverein Aktuelle Kunst, Münster
The exhibition is centered around a magazine stand, holding a set of booklets produced for the exhibition, the front and back covers are adorned with images of cans of Arizona brand tea, and packets of Skittles candy, which are what was found on Trayvon’s person at his time of death, as he was on his way back to his family’s house from the store when he was killed. Arizona tea and Skittles candy have since become a symbol used to memorialize his passing. Within the booklet, is a zoomed in stretched image of Trayvon Martin’s eyes, the image spread piece by piece across each subsequent page so that the image cannot be viewed all at once, only in small fragments, with a black bar (the kind used to cover eyes in photos to hide identity) that comes in and stretches all the way to the last page, to just cover the eyes of an image that was falsely asserted by the media to be Trayvon, and was used to demonize him as being a “thug” and a menace to society, when the picture wasn’t even of him. Also put behind the line is a similar image of Trayvon, with mouth jewelry, I love this image, I have images of myself like this. I use the black bar as a motif in my work, placing many images of different black people imperfectly behind it, to allude to how society has a tendency to try to collapse whole groups of people thinly into a monolith. The black bar is a container to obscure identity. But all of who Trayvon was, and all of who a person is cannot be contained within that line so easily, when you try to contain people, they spill out. The booklets on the stand create a simulated store display of the mentioned drink and candy, and you are meant to take one, but notice the camera on the mic stand. That's the price of taking a copy, of taking this allegorical piece of Trayvon and by extension, myself. You are documented, surveilled, captured, putting you as the viewer in a quasi-similar position to Trayvon as he left the store that day to never make it home. The camera, connected to the internet, may be viewed by myself, from anywhere, at any time, and the recordings from which are to be held privately by me. I also cannot deliver this work without of course mentioning the performance piece Unitled/ Clefa, by friend and peer, conceptual artist Devin Kenny. Wherein the performance, set to the tune of the Migos track Versace he performed the “meme” act of “Trayvoning”, where someone lays face down on the ground lifeless as if dead, while clutching a can Arizona tea and a bag of skittles candy, this act was typically performed by young white people online in ridicule of Trayvon, this act is taken and turned memorial by it being done by a black man, taking people back outside of the role of Trayvon, a role they occupied by choice, out of mockery, where as this installation places the viewer, by my choice, back in the position of Trayvon in a way meant to elicit empathy, and discomfort. Whether it is successful in that errand is another conversation to be had at a later date.
My work with images, like the ones in the exhibition, and in the booklet, are broken into pieces and assembled back together, I think the originally unintended symbolism in that is potent. When the aforementioned “comet” hits us, and we shatter into pieces, what pieces do we take with us, what pieces of ourselves do we leave behind, either by choice, necessity, or force. As an artist, my work is almost like my life being on display, my deepest thoughts, fears and otherwise being viewable. In the installation there is a stack of packages of printer paper, the total number of pieces of paper in the stack is equivalent to days of my life from the day of my birth, to the opening of this exhibition, which is 9,358. The total number of pieces of paper used in the installation, as well as used to print the booklets and the exhibition text, were counted, and that number was then deducted from the stack. Asserting that each individual piece of paper used to create this show, is a day broken off of my life, of myself, and put on display. And you then see just how much paper is left in the stack. Even if you were to take every one of those pages, and print them with the events of that day in my life, you still wouldn’t have a full understanding of who I am or might be. People might zoom in and focus on individual pieces of you, and demonize or romanticize those pieces, and completely miss the full picture or who you might be. I think that the only true understanding that you can have of other people is that you cannot fully understand them, and it takes humility to admit that. But even then, despite that, we must still try regardless. To love, is to try.