Black artists offer unflinchingly direct portrayal of racism for viewers at ArtPrize 9
Both Monroe Akibang O’Bryant and Le’Andra LeSeur enter the complex terrain of incorporating and appropriating racist signs and codes, including stereotypes, slurs, and violence, to shock viewers out of complacency.
Monroe Akibang O’Bryant’s new series, “A Walk in the Park in America,” is comprised of photographs as richly colorful and carefully staged as his previous, prize-winning “Realistic Neglects” (2013–2015). However, the new images, showing at DeVos Place for ArtPrize 9, are not reenactments of actual crime scenes. Instead O’Bryant has crafted a series of satirical pictures that provoke reflection on the violence, both external and internal, caused by racism in contemporary U.S. life.
A few blocks away at The Fed Galleries@KCAD, Le’Andra LeSeur also engages the impact of violence on individuals and communities in her video art series “Searching.” As viewers enter the small dark gallery we encounter two screens on opposite walls. One screen features a series of short films with the artist performing simple repetitive actions, putting on and taking off a hoodie or handcuffs, shooting a cap gun, raising her hands above her head, respectively. Each film is introduced by a paragraph referencing the death of an unarmed black civilian at the hands of the authorities. On the facing wall, video portraits reveal one after another Black woman; for several minutes the camera is fixed on them, allowing us to see them in their environment. Although they shift slightly, their eyes flicking away periodically, they always return to look back in the camera’s relentless gaze. Their awareness of surveillance, their calm, resigned demeanor, is unsettling given the scenes of shocking racial injustice invoked in the video performances on the opposite wall. They watch us, watching them, watching the racialized acts of violence performed again and again with neither justice nor relief in sight.
Although more subtle than O’Bryant’s work, LeSeur’s videos are no less impactful for their confrontation with the dominant white code that shapes U.S. social and political structures. The power of each symbolic object, pose, song or spoken phrase is heightened by the meditative pacing, the darkened room, the expressionless faces of artist and portrait subjects.
The differences in tone found in each artist’s work can be traced back to the differing art historical traditions they draw upon. O’Bryant’s use of irony, exaggerated stereotypes, and surreal tableaux can be compared to satirists from 18th century British painter William Hogarth to 21st century artist Kara Walker. The in-your-face character of his work is further reminiscent of the 1970s groups AfriCobra, the Chicago-based collective whose prints and paintings created the aesthetic of the Black Power movement. Like AfriCobra artists Jeff Donaldson and Barbara Jones-Hogu, O’Bryant uses brilliant color and the expressive power and rhythms of the human body to convey a message of resistance by any means necessary.
LeSeur acknowledges her ties to the tradition of Conceptual Art, particularly the performance and video artist Adrian Piper. Piper’s iconic “My Calling Card” (1986) and “Cornered” (1988) called out the viewer’s assumptions by quietly and directly observing the micro-aggressions in social interactions. LeSeur’s use of flags, clouds, Billie Holiday, and gospel choirs is further reminiscent of the appropriation of signs and references to popular culture found throughout the broader 1960s and 1990s conceptual traditions, from Jasper Johns to David Hammons.
Both O’Bryant and LeSeur enter the complex terrain of incorporating and appropriating racist signs and codes, including stereotypes, slurs, and violence, to shock viewers out of complacency.
O’Bryant presents a group of separate vignettes that build into morality tales like Hogarth did centuries ago, but with a much more surreal effect. As bizarre as his sequences first appear, their exaggerations cast a stark light on the construction of black male and female identity in contemporary American life. When O’Bryant’s photographs are understood as satire, the dominant power structure is revealed. Its affection for black people as long as they remain servile, its desire to control and exploit their bodies, and the brutality it enacts when they resist domination are the assertions of a white patriarchal culture.
These are themes replayed in every mass media form, from professional sports, to television and film, to the music industry, to the news, and are reiterated in the routine incarceration of black people at a rates considerably higher than the rest of the population. However it is only when we see the graphic exaggerations of “Walk in the Park” that we are forced to confront the degree to which we have internalized and enacted such dehumanizing stereotypes.
Although embedded in a time-based medium that many ArtPrize 9 viewers will likely not have the patience for, LeSeur’s incorporation of a racial slur juxtaposed with a child’s toy gun in “He Was Only 12,” similarly runs the risk of offending viewers to the point that they may not catch the deeper message.
Using racist imagery and references certainly can cause viewers to perceive artists as confirming, rather than challenging, racist stereotypes and assumptions. Black artist Kara Walker, most famous for her panoramic silhouette murals portraying grisly stories from the history of U.S. slavery, has received such responses throughout her career, from her earliest, highly acclaimed, mural installation “Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Negress and Her Heart” (1994). Although Walker would go on to receive a MacArthur genius grant for her work, she was also severely criticized by artists in the Black community including the legendary Betye Saar. Because Walker’s stories began with historical realities and expanded on them to create spectacular narratives of violence, sexuality, and disrupted relationships, viewers sometimes have had difficulty reconciling the images with the historical ideals they have come to expect.
O’Bryant’s tales and LeSeur’s videos may have a similarly upsetting quality; what viewers see is recognizable, but unthinkable. A further challenge specific to the ArtPrize experience is that the majority of viewers at this event expect art to be visually pleasing in a more immediate and sentimental manner.
Both artists’ use of the medium of photography and video, the most ubiquitous visual language of our time, makes their work that much more unsettling. We know photography is subjective, yet it holds the persistent appearance of objective truth. We know what we see when we look at “Walk in the Park” and “Searching” is true, even when we don’t want to believe it.
O’Bryant and LeSeur offer ArtPrize 9 viewers a powerful antidote to the biased assumptions with which we are all familiar but refuse to see, an unflinchingly direct portrayal of those assumptions taken to their absurd and inhumane conclusions. The challenge with appropriative political practices like O’Bryant’s and LeSeur’s is that they set a high level of expectation of viewers. However, their presence at ArtPrize 9 demonstrates that they hold themselves to even higher standards, by putting themselves and their reputations on the line for the sake of exposing the increasing pressure of racism on communities of color in the United States today.
Engage with the artists:
Monroe O’Bryant: One of O’Bryant’s most admirable qualities is his willingness to directly engage in conversations with his viewers. He can frequently be found at his work in the hallway between DeVos Convention Center and Amway Grand Hotel, patiently but unapologetically explaining his work and preaching African American resistance to racism.
Le’Andra LeSeur: LeSeur will also be present in person for conversation about her work at The Fed Galleries @ KCAD on a panel discussion on Monday, September 25 at 11:30 with director of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Dr. David Pilgrim, and community advocate and art teacher for the GRPS, Dana Knight.
