At the ‘Respond’ exhibition in the Smack Mellon gallery, practically every piece elicited a response from me as a viewer. The diverse body of work and the intense subject matter made it hard not to feel something when confronted with the work. The artists and their work demanded responses from viewers in a variety of ways; striking visuals, shocking imagery and symbolism, words, figures, all play their role in making the viewer respond.
Eric Garner’s death by police chokehold left America reeling as it was captured on a cell phone camera. The words spoken by Eric Garner in the recording stuck particularly in the memory of those who saw and protested the death especially ‘I can’t breathe’, which came to be a major rallying cry of the Black Lives Matter movement. I have never been able to watch the video but I have heard the audio and, like millions who saw or heard it, was appalled by the demise of Eric Garner as well as the failure to indict the man who killed him. ‘Respond’ dealt with this and many, many other black deaths in varied, intense ways.
Atikur Abdul’s Garner’s Last Words obviously deals in the same challenging material of racial violence inflicted by police officers but touched me very differently than the other works around it. When looking at Abdul’s painting in multiple mediums, including oil paint and sharpie, the piece seems less about drawing a response from the audience and more about the artist responding. The viewer can clearly imagine someone listening to the heartbreaking, horrific audio and watching the tragedy unfold through a cell phone video many times over to try and capture each of Eric Garner’s last words.
This painting felt like a part of mourning, a labor of love for the murdered speaker, and an artists very intimate and personal response to a tragedy. The immediacy Abdul’s response and it’s moving presentation through the words spoken and an image interpretation made this the piece I felt most truly connected to. The rawness of horror, shock, sorrow, and helplessness shared in the wake of the death and video is captured incredibly by Atikur Abdul in Garner’s Last Words.
