CAGE
This installation, CAGE, constructs a layered narrative to examine the killings in the African American community. I see the effects of the hypnotic self-loathing powerlessness which is supported by centuries of institutional racism.
CAGE is a memorial for victims: the community, the families, the murdered, and the incarcerated, to remember, to search for truth and to forgive. CAGE gives the murdered victims a face and a history. CAGE identifies the ones that terrorize their communities and how they were conditioned to hate, kill and be killed.
The enclosed area of CAGE, the shrine, is to respect and sympathize with the love ones remembering and sharing their lost.
The quilt is symbolic of protection and of a gathering of history through an oral tradition, piece by piece. Quilts protect against the weather and some have interior places to keep medicines or magic potions to cure and protect the owner.
The quilts in CAGE are eight feet tall African American men, The Black Man is God, Caged and Most Wanted. They stand in judgment. What is their crime? Being born?? Being Black?