{"id":11384,"date":"2022-02-04T09:15:58","date_gmt":"2022-02-04T09:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/media-archive.blackartinamerica.com\/?p=11384"},"modified":"2022-01-24T12:18:08","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T12:18:08","slug":"tales-from-the-b-a-sket-black-art-sketches-for-the-contemporary-art-lover-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=11384","title":{"rendered":"Tales from The b.a.SKET: Black Art Sketches for the Contemporary Art Lover"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
By D. Amari Jackson<\/pre>\r\nThis week, we reach into the b.a.SKET and pull out two pivotal moments in the life of a conscious and visionary artist…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n
Two events, 30 years apart, had an indelible impact on Philadelphia-born painter, educator, mixed media artist, and activist . The first occurred as a child growing up in the mid-20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cI was at a friend\u2019s house and in Life magazine I saw a lynched African man lying over a log, burning from the inside out,\u201d Pindell told The Guardian<\/em>, this past November. \u201cWhite men were standing around him looking thrilled. My friend\u2019s mother was cooking meat, and the smell and sight made me unable to eat meat for a year.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
The second took place in 1979. Upon leaving her position as The Museum of Modern Art\u2019s (MoMA) first African American curator, Pindell spoke openly about the institutional racism she faced at the museum. The split was far from cordial as she further \u00a0protested a MoMA exhibit she believed to be racist. That same year, upon accepting a teaching position at the State University of New York Stony Brook, Pindell was seriously injured in a car accident that left her with severe head trauma and acute memory loss. Through her subsequent rehabilitation, she further committed herself to her artistic process, producing works that spoke to relevant themes of memory, race, and social inequity while pulling from those pivotal life moments that shaped her.<\/p>\r\n
The results were simultaneously provocative and compelling. In Free, White & 21<\/em>, Pindell employed video to recount her personal experiences with racism as an African American woman in the United States. Challenging the social construct of race based on skin color, the video segments incorporated footage of Pindell dressed as a white woman with blond wig, skin-lightening makeup, and sunglasses responding to her Black counterpart\u2019s racial testimonials and experiences with victim-blaming statements.<\/p>\r\n
At the end of the segment, the white character bluntly quipped, “You must really be paranoid. I’ve never had an experience like that.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cBut, then, I’m free, white, and 21.\u201d<\/p>\r\n