Black artist censored at KCAD exhibition
[UPDATE: The work will be returned to its originally intended spot, available for public view.] The work of ArtPrize artist Le’Andra LeSeur had been split in half, with one video placed in another room for limited viewing. Some, like myself, don’t have the luxury of avoiding the effects of racism in our country. The KCAD president shouldn’t be allowed to make that decision for the viewing public either.
UPDATE: Since publishing this article, we have learned that the work is scheduled to be restored to its original location. We applaud KCAD for reverting the decision and restoring the work to its intended presentation.
Editor’s note: My son and I visited the ArtPrize exhibition at KCAD with the author of this article last Saturday, excited to explore the exhibition. Once there we discovered the one black artist’s work had been split in half per the direction of KCAD president Leslie Bellavance. The work, which speaks about racism and the ways we marginalize black people, had itself been marginalized. We hope that the voices of our member Erica Monroe and the artist Le’Andra Leseur (along with another important voice in this conversation, KCAD student Aaminah Shakur, who shares what happened in their public letter to the president) will encourage KCAD to restore this powerful and wholly appropriate artwork to its original place. There is still time for KCAD to revert their decision before the ArtPrize event begins. It is an unnecessary censorship of this important issue. Art has the power to make us uncomfortable, thank God, about things we would rather not talk about. We need to talk about this.
It always starts with something, right? A hairline crack in the ice, a drop of rain, a single note of music. For me it was a conversation with friends one recent evening. The conversation had drifted to “difficult knowledge” and trying to understand the psychological reasons why it is so hard for human beings to engage and act when faced with difficult realities, specifically related to subjects like global warming, women’s rights, and racism.
Why do people become glazed and despondent, paralyzed and apathetic to issues they know have enormous impact on their lives, their families, the entire human race? From there the conversation shifted to capacity: there are heightened levels of psychological, physical, emotional, and spiritual fatigue for those that live daily with the inheritances of racism, sexism, violence, oppression, and marginalization. An already heaping psychosocial plate can leave little room for the energy to participate in and/or evoke large scale change.
As a single mom working full time to make ends meet, I often have nothing left to give about anything at the end of the day. My concerns are more immediate and pressing. All too often, as a someone working with marginalized children and families, and as a woman and a Black person myself, these bigger concerns are embedded into my life—despite my attempts to avoid them and stave off psychological fatigue.
Out of necessity, I try to clear the discomfort, block the reality, and move on as much as possible. I just don’t have time or energy to confront my own deep-rooted pain surrounding the issue of racism constantly. What can I do? What can I say to make any difference? Yes, I gladly subscribe to such “cognitive dissonance” if it will help me make it through another day.
But Saturday wasn’t just another day. It turns out it was the day—the day the crack widened, the raindrops fell, and the music started. The day I couldn’t just allow cognitive dissonance to rule.
On Saturday I went to check out some ArtPrize installations at KCAD. There were some riveting works but I had several errands to run and little time to get sidetracked.
Too late.
I overheard a conversation about an artist, Le’Andra Leseur, who had half of her installation taken down, we were told, at the request of the President of Kendall College of Art and Design of FSU, Leslie Bellavance. My interest was piqued. After more questions and probing I got the bulk of the explanation of what the work was supposed to look like: the removed video is a response to the shooting of Tamir Rice, part of a series called “Searching.” The artist, an African-American herself, stands in front of the camera shooting a toy gun, with its very toy-like sound, as she says “he was 12” and “toy gun” multiple times. Behind her, the word “ni**er” slowly appears letter by letter, with the artist’s own body serving as asterisks. That’s it. Across from that video, another video depicts women sitting in front of the camera, blinking, with background noises like birds chirping. Throughout the video, various locations and outfits are shown, but always, a woman is staring at the camera. Together, as intended, the work is powerful.
The piece, vetted and selected by KCAD, had earlier been fully installed. Now, though, the video “He Was 12” has been removed and placed in some other room outside the galleries (though the location is vague at best), outside of the exhibition as a whole. It is still unknown the decision on what limited hours that this video will be viewed.
As I left the gallery, I started to push the anger at the injustice of the situation out of my mind. I’ve got too many things to do to get wrapped up in fighting this battle, I told myself. But it would. Not. Leave. Over the next couple of hours my rage grew as I mulled over all the ways this was wrong. Not a mistake or a misunderstanding but a straightforward attempt to invalidate, and frankly violate, the power of Leseur’s work and personal experiences.
That Saturday afternoon, somewhere between slamming the car door (hard) and stomping up the front door, came the spring thaw, the rainbow, the crescendo of turning from impotent powerless rage and despair to determination and action. I realized I was causing myself greater harm by turning away from injustice and denying the presence of my own pain rather than facing it and taking a stand. Standing with other human beings dealing with similar pain and trauma does not rob me of energy or come to nothing. On the contrary, when I also stop censoring myself it makes me more of… me. More human, more present, more empathetic, more energetic, more powerful.
I reached out to the artist herself. Le’Andra Leseur had a thoughtful, gracious demeanor, speaking of the still unresolved incident in an open minded and decidedly hopeful manner, despite the unexpected turbulence the censorship of her piece has her navigating. Leseur’s concept of the series of videos in “Searching,” in which “He Was 12” is a part, came as a response to, a way to cope with, the violent murders of black men and women. She created this deeply personal work to help her process the continual trauma of racially motivated violence and murder, a plea for the viewer not to forget.
From this writer’s vantage point, it seems that Bellavance would like us to forget, to ignore, to not have to look at this difficult reality. This reality is one that no black man or woman is able to truly censor from their own narrative or experience, painful or not. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just decide to edit out the racial epithets thrown at us, to pretend the white supremacists marching around the country are a thing of the past, to avoid the subtle racism evident in this very act of censorship? How nice that Bellavance has the freedom and power to do this for herself, and in turn, make this decision to shut away the realities of racism for the ArtPrize viewership at large.
The video originally facing “He Was 12,” Leseur explains, contains video portraits of African-American women representing the role Black women take on through necessity. We as Black women are nurturing and holding together the fabric of family and culture. Black women, the backbone and support system, are too often silenced and marginalized in society on a daily basis.
It’s no small hit to the psyche, then, to see the artist’s work itself, and therefore the artist, marginalized and—for all intents and purposes—silenced.
Leseur, who partnered with KCAD in late June, flew out to Grand Rapids the Thursday before Labor Day to see her piece after it had been installed.
It was after that visit that Leseur was made aware that there were concerns about her work. Leseur explains that she was not involved or included in any dialogue during deliberation or decision making surrounding her installation. Instead, she was simply informed, via email, of what had been decided after the fact. I am told ArtPrize was also not included in this process, but also left out of the conversation and informed later.
At this time, half of the installation and its accompanying artist statement are no longer hanging in the exhibition hall. She does not know where they are.
All of this begs the question: what are the legal requirements of the “hosting agreement,” the contract between the artists and venues, that both Leseur and KCAD signed?
Section 3 designates that the work will be shown within the venue, which in this case is the The Fed Galleries, but it is currently outside the galleries. Though currently it is stated by KCAD that half of Leseur’s work will be available for limited viewing hours, Section 4 of that agreement specifies hours in which the work must be available for view:
“Specifically, the portion of the Venue displaying the Artwork must be available for public access during the ArtPrize period from September 20, 2017 through October 8, 2017 as follows.
Monday through Thursday: 5:00PM — 8:00PM
Friday and Saturday: 12:00PM — 8:00PM
Sunday: 12:00PM — 6:00PM”
Are venues, and/or individuals representing them, within their rights to disassemble an artists’ work? Are they permitted to limit viewing times? And what can be done if a breach of contract occurs?
Though Leseur has not heard from anyone affiliated with ArtPrize, she says the President of KCAD told her that ArtPrize would like her to take part in a public discussion sometime during ArtPrize. While this is an engagement Leseur has expressed a willingness to partake in, this essentially puts the onus on the artist to advocate for and defend her work. This strikes me as particularly callous as it adds to the emotional baggage already placed on an artist who has had her work flagrantly diluted and desecrated. As I see it, this is a classic example of re-traumatizing an already traumatized individual and then asking them, without apology, without the benefit or assurance that their art will be respected and their contract honored, to talk about this trauma in front of an audience. And for whose benefit exactly?
Towards the end of our conversation, Leseur relayed a recent experience she had at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. In the wake of learning how she had been censored and essentially robbed of her artistic voice, she has struggled to navigate many raw emotions, looking for resolution and peace. She said that she was walking through a section on Emmett Till. Till, as a young African American boy, was savagely beaten and lynched—brutally killed for whistling at a white woman in 1955. Her son’s body recovered and returned to Chicago for burial, Emmett’s mother insisted on a funeral with an open casket. Uncensored. Why should she hide and protect a country from the sight of what their collective fear and domination had done to her 14 year old son?
Next to the exhibit was a NAACP poster supporting the Till family, from… Grand Rapids, Michigan.
“And the heavens opened,” says Leseur. There was her hope, found in a poster in Washington D.C. “It was almost like a sign on what I needed to do as an artist to make sure the work isn’t censored… [I] was at a loss for what my next steps would be in order to try and make sure my work wasn’t censored.”
Leseur says the mother’s fight to not let her son’s death be censored, and the letter from Grand Rapids, made her realize she couldn’t just sit by.
“It no longer is about me as the artist but instead about the larger discussion around the context of the work and what that means to the Grand Rapids community,” she says. “If I stayed silent on the censorship of the work, I would not only be doing myself an injustice but I would be doing an injustice to the people of the Grand Rapids community if they were not able to experience this work and have this important discussion on race and inclusion.”
This is my story, Le’Andra’s story, Emmett’s story. But beyond that, it is also the story of fighting for an honest narrative, fighting for justice, fighting for a better future. If I don’t engage, what is the point in nourishing my child and preparing him for the future if I’m not willing to struggle for the betterment of the world he will inherit?
Let it be aired. Let it seen. Let it be felt. Only then can true dialogue and healing begin.
