I learned a plethora of revealing, disturbing, and eye-opening information at this meeting. The essential topic of the meeting was about activist art. Individuals like Nan Goldin, Adrian Piper, Kara Walker, Dread Scott, Gonzalez-Day, Weiwei, and more were instruments of this kind of activist work.
Fred Wilson is one of the activist artist. His art reflected how black men were invisible once they were in a suit. People saw a black man in his work uniform and he became just that, a black man in a uniform. Wilson noticed that these men were stripped of identity and personality. To test a group of people at his exhibition, he introduced himself to them and told them to meet him on an upper level of the exhibit to talk about his art (which displayed black men in all kinds suits as guards, security, etc., but with no heads just black necks and bodies). The people met him upstairs and waited for 15 minutes. It was when they started to complain about waiting that he revealed himself. He had been in the suit with them the entire time, but not a single person realized or noticed it was him. People are blind to the black man in the suit.
Dread Scott is another activist artist. The N.A.A.C.P during heavily and overt racist times hung a sign on a busy, city-like block for millions of people to read. The sign said “A Black Man was Lynched Yesterday.” In 2015, Scott hung his own similar sign over a busy business-like block where thousands or millions of people could see it. His sign read “A Black Man was Lynched By Police Yesterday.” This was obviously a powerful message concerning police brutality at the time.
I also learned where the hate words that start with f and n originated from. As well as that Aunt Jemima (pancake mix and syrup mix) was a way for White people to feel like they had a black woman working for them. In other words, another form of racism that has lived through centuries into our modern times and prevails into our future. I always thought Aunt Jemima was the woman who came up with the recipe for pancake mix and syrup. I was entirely wrong.
Weiwei is another activist artist, who used thousands of backpacks to display the deaths of 3,500 children who were killed in China from a fatal earthquake. The Chinese government wasn’t cooperative and didn’t do anything to protect the children. The place where the children were, was earthquake prone. Weiwei wanted to expose the Chinese government for their negligence and censoring. The display was created in Germany to tell the story of thousands of children who died that day. All that was left after the earthquake were thousands of children’s’ backpacks littered all over the place. Devastating, considering these were the children that resulted around the time of China’s one-child policy. Many parents lost their only children that day and the Chinese government refused to acknowledge it, but censored the tragedy instead.
World’s highest standard of living, there’s no way like the American way
Looking into the Mirror, the Black Woman asked, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall Who’s the Finest of them All?” The Mirror Says ” Snow White, You Black B****, And Don’t You Forget It!”
