Forging a link

Forging a Link: Metalsmiths Respond to the Mercer Collection, curated by Professor Cappy Counard of Edinboro University.  In 2019 I was invited to make new work in response to Mercer Museum’s vast collection of pre-industrial tools and home goods. Being granted access to any museum collection is a privilege enjoyed by very few, as I felt necessary to use my many privileges to set focus on racism and its ways of cultural theft.

Statement: This research and object making explores post-colonialist narratives constructed by current social and economic anxieties about topics such as digital technologies, and of otherness; of how majority and minority identities are constructed. 

I am absorbed by the Mercer Museum’s collection of tobacco advertisements depicting a black faced minstrel, court jester, and an native American Indian chief. These trade figures were considered tools, and objects of advertisement by Henry Mercer. These bodies are artifacts of earlier systems of consumption, essentially, of intoxicants like tobacco and liquor. Their original purported function is blind to the fact that these figures represent a form of cultural appropriation and discriminatory biases.

I have intentionally layered another form of appropriation, or re-mix to the trade figures by 3D scanning and digitally repositioning the bodies in forms of demonstration. By punching the air with a fist, and taking a knee, these bodies are released from their wheeled pediments and given the expression of protest.