After the Charles White exhibit with my IDC class I became interested in African American art and how it is viewed by America/ the rest of the world. Charles White’s art displayed the power and strength of African Americans during the 60s so I wanted to see how art changed to the present day. Earlier this year artist and historian Rhinold Ponder celebrated and contemplated the African American experience with his art. His exhibition titled “The Rise and Fail of the N-Word: Beyond Black and White” at Princeton University explored the idea of race in the United States. Ponder designed his show to provide a visual prompt to create a safe place for difficult and honest discussions about race. As Ponders says, “It begins with challenging our vocabulary and our need to accept the varied cultural perspectives brought to what must become an emotionally mature dialogue.” I found this concept of the N-word very complex and came to the conclusion that no race should say it because the word comes with blood-soaked history. This is displayed in Ponder’s art.
This is distinct and present in Rhinold art called “Keloids and Scars.” Ponder depicts oppression and tried to replicate the actual process of the brutality of slavery in this piece “He used canvases made from cut-up black leather coats, whose texture somewhat resembles human skin. After stretching the canvas onto frames, he hung the frames from trees and beat them with a whip covered with red paint, until gashes and scars appeared and oozed red.” What is more important than the end product is the process Ponders took to create the art. When analyzing the artwork, one can feel a degree of pain which is Ponder’s purpose. The leather and red paint represents and closely resemble a slave’s body after being tortured; putting this up at a museum allows the audience to build a connection between the art and themselves. The emotion acquainted with the painting should be reflected towards one’s self and how they view society. The word is inseparably linked with violence and brutality on black minds and derogatory implications on black bodies. No degree of appropriating can rid it of that blood-soaked history so individuals should take into consideration the suffering before saying the word.
But what is more interesting is that the word is not the real problem, the power dynamic is. In the United States there is so much controversy and tension behind it, thus deteriorating at peoples’ creativity. In one of Ponder’s experiments he hired 20 graphic artists from around the world, 10 foreign and 10 American, to create a logo using the n-word. “What that tells me is that racism is destructive to our creativity. It goes back to our inability to critically think,” he says. “That is one of the things I hope comes out of the project: that it forces us to think differently about the word.” (Ponders, 5) Ponders proves through his experiment, race is a mental barrier. Even artists who are experienced in expressing their emotions had trouble with such a simple task. “Do not use the colors black and white.” I believe that America has conditioned its people to associate the race with the separation of the colors black and white. Americans should learn more about the history of African American culture to offer them a different perspective in the world because society is simply playing mind games.
To sum up, the idea of racism is still prevalent and will not go away unless we all face it and have important discussions.
