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Please read & share Hannah Black’s open letter to the curators and staff of the Whitney Biennial

blackcontemporaryart:

To the curators and staff of the Whitney biennial:

I am writing to ask you to remove Dana Schutz’s painting “Open Casket” and with the urgent recommendation that the painting be destroyed and not entered into any market or museum.

As you know, this painting depicts the dead body of 14-year-old Emmett Till in the open casket that his mother chose, saying, “Let the people see what I’ve seen.” That even the disfigured corpse of a child was not sufficient to move the white gaze from its habitual cold calculation is evident daily and in a myriad of ways, not least the fact that this painting exists at all. In brief: the painting should not be acceptable to anyone who cares or pretends to care about Black people because it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time.

Although Schutz’s intention may be to present white shame, this shame is not correctly represented as a painting of a dead Black boy by a white artist – those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material. The subject matter is not Schutz’s; white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights. The painting must go.

Emmett Till’s name has circulated widely since his death. It has come to stand not only for Till himself but also for the mournability (to each other, if not to everyone) of people marked as disposable, for the weight so often given to a white woman’s word above a Black child’s comfort or survival, and for the injustice of anti-Black legal systems. Through his mother’s courage, Till was made available to Black people as an inspiration and warning. Non-Black people must accept that they will never embody and cannot understand this gesture: the evidence of their collective lack of understanding is that Black people go on dying at the hands of white supremacists, that Black communities go on living in desperate poverty not far from the museum where this valuable painting hangs, that Black children are still denied childhood. Even if Schutz has not been gifted with any real sensitivity to history, if Black people are telling her that the painting has caused unnecessary hurt, she and you must accept the truth of this. The painting must go.

Ongoing debates on the appropriation of Black culture by non-Black artists have highlighted the relation of these appropriations to the systematic oppression of Black communities in the US and worldwide, and, in a wider historical view, to the capitalist appropriation of the lives and bodies of Black people with which our present era began. Meanwhile, a similarly high-stakes conversation has been going on about the willingness of a largely non-Black media to share images and footage of Black people in torment and distress or even at the moment of death, evoking deeply shameful white American traditions such as the public lynching. Although derided by many white and white-affiliated critics as trivial and naive, discussions of appropriation and representation go to the heart of the question of how we might seek to live in a reparative mode, with humility, clarity, humour and hope, given the barbaric realities of racial and gendered violence on which our lives are founded. I see no more important foundational consideration for art than this question, which otherwise dissolves into empty formalism or irony, into a pastime or a therapy.

The curators of the Whitney biennial surely agree, because they have staged a show in which Black life and anti-Black violence feature as themes, and been approvingly reviewed in major publications for doing so. Although it is possible that this inclusion means no more than that blackness is hot right now, driven into non-Black consciousness by prominent Black uprisings and struggles across the US and elsewhere, I choose to assume as much capacity for insight and sincerity in the biennial curators as I do in myself. Which is to say – we all make terrible mistakes sometimes, but through effort the more important thing could be how we move to make amends for them and what we learn in the process. The painting must go.

Thank you for reading
Hannah Black
Artist/writer
Whitney ISP 2013-14

Co-signatories/with the support of:

Amal Alhaag
Hannah Assebe
Anwar Batte
Charmaine Bee
Parker Bright
Vivian Crockett
Jareh Das
Aria Dean
Kimberly Drew
Chrissy Etienne
Hamishi Farah
Ja'Tovia Gary
Juliana Huxtable
Anisa Jackson
Hannah Catherine Jones
Devin Kenny
Carolyn Lazard
Taylor LeMelle
Tiona Nekkia McClodden
Sandra Mujinga
Precious Okoyomon
Emmanuel Olunkwa
Imani Robinson
Andrew Ross
Christina Sharpe
Misu Simbiatu
Dominique White
Kandis Williams

(via mollysoda)

21╱03╱17
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blackcontemporaryart
iehudit: “ ana mendieta, 1976 ”
iehudit: “ ana mendieta, 1976 ”
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neshamama
lewisapon: “ kradhe: “ USA. Washington, D.C. August 28, 1963. The March on Washington (detail) Leonard Freed ” ”
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kradhe
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mariaslikesss
Calming masterpost:

shelbys-advice-blog:

crisis/urgent support lines and sites

relaxation/anxiety relief

the quiet place project

music and sounds

comfort food

advice and tips

videos and movies

distractions etc

extras

Calming songs, playlists and instrumentals:

Calming/distracting Websites

Crafts and activities, easy and fun DYI projects

What to do when:

Meditation and breathing

Simple things

Make Something!

Other Nice Things

Calming/Relaxing Music:

  • Soft Piano: x, x, x, x, x
  • The Sound of Waves: x
  • The Sound of a Storm + Waves: x

(via wocinsolidarity)

15╱11╱16
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shelbys-advice-blog
Action Items: Some Things You Can Do

jestershark:

Hi, all; here’s a list of things you can do to help people and to minimize harm in this time. 

Find protests:

Check out left wing/progressive/socialist meet spaces on https://www.meetup.com. Many of them will have a protest or get you in contact with people who might know when or where protests are. Show up to them. Be seen.

Find protests: https://popularresistance.org/calendar/

Find protests: http://www.protestwithme.com/locations.php

What to do if your rights are violated at a protest.

Donate food or clothes to foodbanks and local charities, and volunteer there too if you can. Poor people are going to suffer after this, and will need support. 

Vote: vote locally, vote left, vote in the smallest elections. See if people are even running for seats– city council, school council, board comptrollers. A town in Virginia had almost nobody run this year. You can run for these positions, and if not you, find a friend who might do it. This is where tides turn. Maybe. Vote in 2017, 2018.

Write your Representatives: This is probably not the strongest option seeing as many of these guys know that they didn’t get fucking voted out this time. But hopefully knowing they have eyes on their backs will make them pause before they vote through bigoted stuff.

It’s best, if you can, to write actual, physical letters. They are more of a pain in the ass to political staff– you have to open them, read them, and digitize them, rather than emails which can generally be clicked and saved and ignored. Write a ton of letters. Organize a write in if you can. Flood offices.

Here’s a sample letter:

Dear [name];

I’m calling on you, as a voter and a citizen, to do all in your power to block anti-immigration, anti-LGBT, racist, sexist, and xenophobic laws that might be put into pass by our future government. President Elect Donald J Trump did not win my vote, and did not win the popular vote: he was not voted in by a majority of Americans. My friends and my family will be directly affected by the results of this election and it is up to you to ensure that America remains diverse and accepting. Know that we will be watching your actions in these coming years and we will take action.

This presidency will have ramifications that will last 30 years, and I ask you consider that, as you consider the sway of the electorate in the next four years as well.

Sincerely,

[Name]

You can use a similar script if you call. Make sure you know that your representative knows that this was a fluke, not an outcome to expect again. Even if it’s not true, putting pressure on representatives might influence future decisions.

Contact Hillary Clinton and ask she ask for a recount. It’s not about actual votes, but it is about making sure it is seen that the vote is being contested.

Sometimes it’s good to take even simple or small actions to avoid falling into a pit of despair. Be safe, everyone.

(via arabellesicardi)

11╱11╱16
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jestershark

vengeanceandfrogurt:

Since I do libraries, let me just remind everyone that they are community centers and offer FREE services to anyone who lives in the area. Not just books, but courses in information literacy, services for refugee and immigrant transitions, access to computers and help with resumes, a warm place to stay when it’s winter, so much. So if you can, donate to your local library, give them books they can sell in their bookstores, volunteer to shelve so other employees are free to help the patrons, and when it comes to it again, VOTE FOR FUNDING FOR LIBRARIES. It’s a life saving organization. 

(via arabellesicardi)

11╱11╱16
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vengeanceandfrogurt
arabellesicardi: “ I’ve recommended spiro before for acne so it’s now or never if you have the means please go to a derm and plan for the fam. I’m going tomorrow. ”
11╱11╱16
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arabellesicardi
Ce billet susceptible de comporter du contenu pour adultes a été caché par précaution. En savoir plus.
29╱05╱16
kitty-en-classe: “ Jane Birkin par Andrew Birkin, 1972 ”
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viktorijabanda
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thegrandarchives
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rawkiss
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lamignonette

nickxdee:

current relationship status: sleeping diagonally across my queen size bed

(via blo)

29╱05╱16
Running on The Default Network
by Boyce