In Mixed Company...Artists Statement
In Mixed Company
The exhibition, In Mixed Company seeks to bridge the divides of race and class in America through the inspiration of a story I heard as a child. Often where black and white farms of my childhood stood side by side, the prejudices and notions spoken on one side of the fence were vibrantly echoed on the other-- yet never together. This installation explores my rural NC childhood and urban adult relationship to a paradoxical tale, the parable of the black curse. Evincing the poignancy of intra-racial “unspeakables”, the parable reveals how the Black Man supposedly received “the curse” of his nappy hair.
I contemplate these barriers as I transform the barriers of the fence into a forest of fourteen six-foot tall, African-inspired, wood -carved walking sticks, wrapped, bejeweled, and adorned in cockleburs reminiscent of the celebratory defiance of African hair. Ironically, the walking sticks, in opposition to fences’ and barriers’ tendencies to erode the spirit, serve as icons of strength, resilience, and support for the renewal our collective humanity.
By sharing an allegory, heard and understood as a child in isolated 20th century rural USA, and now processing that story as an adult in a cosmopolitan city of the 21st century, I hope to explore the essence of the ‘fence’; to reveal it’s power or lack there of; to appreciate the capacity of the fence to provide protection and strength versus vulnerability and weakness. And to appreciate and convey the truth learned through parable.
Black Curse Parable
The muse for this installation is a true story told on my family’s front porch in Pactolus Township in rural N.C. by an elderly black man during a time of Jim Crow and in the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. It was told with the tension of jest and truth, and heard with the naïveté of a child, uncertain of the line between fact and fiction. It was a parable of the black curse.
PARADOX--A statement or proposition seemingly self contradictory or absurd, but in reality expressing a possible truth.
“The Original Paradox”
…When God created man, He created both the black man and the white man. When He decided to bestow hair to each man, God gave them a choice but not without a “catch”. He had two boxes—one big, beautiful shiny box anointed with the finest jewels made of gold and one small, raggedy, tattered wooden box.
God told the two men that the one who reaches the boxes first gets to choose—first come, first serve—One winner- One loser. Now the black man, who could naturally outrun a jackrabbit raced for the big pretty gold box. But when he opened it – found it was filled with some awful, nappy, kinky, matted hair (the curse of God).
Now, once the slow as a tortoise white man-- thinking he was the “ loser”—opened his “left- over” box-- the tiny, tattered wooden box, he found it was filled with fine hair, like the hair of angels--thus, the black man’s fate. Just as Man was cursed through his temptation by an apple with “the original sin”, the black man was cursed with the legacy of nappy hair and an unhealthy attraction for all things shiny. Now you know what they say, “all that shines ain’t silver—all that glitters ain’t gold…”