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Untitled billboard by Barbara Kruger
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"Whiteness" on Exhibit
By Esther Iverem
SeeingBlack.com Editor
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about the art, race, and the "White" exhibit!
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NEW YORK—A new art exhibit at the International Center of
Photography, "White: Whiteness and Race in Contemporary Art," is
an important, well-meaning but limited show that brings to the
art world discussions about race that have been a part of college
courses for more than a decade. Through photographs, video and
mixed media works by ten artists, the exhibit attempts to tackle
the difficult terrain of race, and dispel the myth that it is primarily
the job of people of color to deal with racism.
"Whiteness continues to offer White people of all classes
a valuable dividend: the ability to exist in the world without
having to think about the color of their skin," writes the
curator, Maurice Berger, in the show's catalogue. "Whiteness
remains today no less meaningful to white people who continually
reinforce their own authority and social standing by seeing themselves
in positive contrast to an inferior, negative, or even dangerous "blackness." For
them, whiteness is pure and value free. It is innate. It is everywhere.
Yet, ironically, it is also invisible."
While the show's accompanying catalogue and text are promising
in their exploration of the subject matter, the show itself falls
into that unfortunate trend of mainstream media to talk about "race" without
talking about racism. And, for a person of color at least, the
two subjects are inextricable. The ten works, largely minimalist
or conceptual in style, don't render the visceral effect
of racism in the world today. This shortcoming makes the exhibit—organized
at the Center for Art and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland,
Baltimore County and here until February 27—a baby step,
not a groundbreaking step, into today's world of race dialogue.
Some of the more visceral works are William Kentridge's
three animated short films that follow two White South African
Jews living under the country's former system of apartheid.
Two men contend with their own greed, complicity and ambivalence
toward the country's oppressed Black majority. The viewer
is left to wonder, however, how much the films reveal about the
construction of White supremacy under one of the most brutal regimes
in world history. When it comes to whiteness on a global scale,
I can't help but think that a simple juxtaposition of programming
from HGTV and Al-Jazeera makes a provocative statement about the
function of Whiteness in the world today.
Barbara Kruger's striking billboard-sized, black-and-white
work shows the fingers of two white hands. The skin of one finger
is peeled back to reveal—beneath—a dark, shiny pigment. Scattered
across the billboard are skin-related phrases, such as "thin
skin," "skin deep" and skinned alive" to
remind us of the shallowness, superficiality, emotions and violence
associated with race.
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Nayland Blake's "
Invisible Man," mixed media.
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Through extreme subtlety, the conceptual art does offer a sense
of the invisibility of whiteness. Nayland Blake's installation, "Invisible
Man," meant to comment on both his biracial roots and folk
stories of Brer Rabbit, includes some childhood snapshots, a video
featuring crudely made cloth dolls and Black rabbits clothed in
white fabric. Gary Simmons's "Big Still," a shiny
white contraption made up of drums, canisters and piping, is meant
to resemble a moonshine still and evoke Depression-era, hillbilly
poverty.
Even when the artwork is easier to decipher, the themes are dated
and old news for those sensitive to debates about race. With
a series of photographs, Nancy Burson interrogates European images
of Christ and what is Godlike. "Heidi," a video by
Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley, references the classic children's
tale of an orphaned girl to tell, instead, a sinister narrative
of family dysfunction and child abuse. While the purpose is to
contradict all those "Leave it to Beaver" images
of pristine White family life, this contradiction has been made
repeatedly in video or film during the past 20 years. Surely,
After the procession, beginning perhaps with Al Bundy on "Married…with
Children," and continuing with more recent offerings like "The
Royal Tenenbaums," "Family Bonds," or "Desperate
Housewives," there are certainly no dearth of visuals for
White family dysfunction.
In "The Yuppie Project," Nikki S. Lee, a Korean artist,
photographs herself with those she describes as privileged Wall
Street WASPS. Lee wears navy blue, pearls and pumps. While the
intention may be to contrast her image with those around her, the
photographs also remind us of the aspirations of many non-Whites
to assume a sort of honorary White status—which is always
in opposition to Blackness.
All of these various considerations of whiteness, including Cindy
Sherman's amusing photographs of herself wearing a variety
of "black" and "white" disguises, photos
by Max Becher and Andrea Robbins of Germans dressed in Native American
costumes, or Wendy Ewald's "White Girl Alphabet," explore
White identities. While perhaps intriguing, they are subtle and
do not speak to racism or its global impact.
There is nothing minimalist about racism.
Related Sites:
Esther Iverem's review of of "White" first
appeared on www.BET.com.
— January 7, 2005
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