An African American Perspective
Closing March 31, 2013
Daily 10AM-4PM
Chicago Temple Gallery
77 W. Washington Street, 2nd Fl.
Chicago, Illinois 60602
312-236-4548
Co-Curators: Patricia Devine-Reed invited each artist to respond to, through our art, "What is the future for our children?"
In
the 21st century, the world is open to our children and the future, along with seemingly unlimited possibilities. Communications
technologies allow instant contact, face-to-face conferencing, and networking
anywhere in the world. Other
technologies enable us to utilize the sun, wind, and all the powers of nature,
science, and history to create and build nearly anything and sustain a
healthy, prosperous life for both people's environments. A vast array of arts and
religions stimulates greater creative genius and healthy souls. Yet, over half the world's children cannot access these rich resources because of poverty, poor education,
inadequate food, prejudice, wars, and other violence. What is the future for our children? Can we… how do we enable our children, the
world's children, to obtain and use global resources for a just world?
This collage responded to a group traveling exhibition where 36 artists (12 Vancouver Canada, 12 Sacramento California, and 12 Mexico City, Mexico) responded to the theme "ENCOUNTER."
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Artist: Alpha
Bruton
Title: The
Encounter: Single Parenting
Dimensions- 36” x 36”
Mixed Media Collage on Wood, 1993
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I reflected on current
affairs, news of the famine in Ethiopia associated with and believed
to be warfare. Looking at the images that photojournalists are
documenting in LIFE Magazine and other periodicals, the starving resemblances
of babies and the American public ask why they are still
procreating in a wartime climate? Where
is the father of these starving children? Again, turning a blind eye and a death ear
to the genocide of a group of people, not only in Ethiopia but in the other
wartime countries that are being systematically and psychologically humiliated by
the enemy.
These acts of
forcible genocides are on the unborn child; committed by soldiers, other
combatants, or civilians during armed conflict or war or during military
occupation, military leaders may actually encourage their soldiers to rape
civilians. Moreover, war rape may occur in various situations, including
institutionalized sexual slavery forced upon young girls and boys.
The focal point in my
collage is of a young girl being seduced by a glass of wine, a song, a dance, a
whisper of seduction, lured into a one-night stand, pre-marital creation, and
another generation reproducing itself.
An embrace from a
white stranger on Thanksgiving Day as a young African-American mother and child
watch their home being burned. In times like these, it is not black or white. Still, a time to show compassion, homelessness will imprint so many
children in the 21st century amongst all the technology and social growth as a
nation.
Then there stands the
image of Lazarus, and what comes to mind is the most powerful scripture, "Jesus
Wept."
Artist: Alpha Bruton
Title: "LIKE" Young Brides-Children 1937 – 1939
Dimensions-24” x 24”
Mixed Media Collage on Wood, 2013 (a work in progress)
Finding these images for my collage
was purely random. I was looking through a box of vintage LIFE Magazines dated
1936 to 1941; I selected these images because they were used in articles with the caption
that read: "The age of parenthood
declines as young girls marry." The content disturbed me as I turned the
pages of history and saw how off-centered the moral needle was in the United
States during the '30s; Incest being the biggest taboo in our
"civilized" society.
"DIONNE
QUINTUPLETS 05/17/1937." I selected these images because the girls were taken from their families by the doctor who delivered
them, put on display as lab rats for nine years, exploited to the tune of
millions of dollars. Even a tourist trade was set up around the town where they were born.
But, the tragedy was that the family that fought to get them back failed to protect
them. Instead, they became prey to the father and were oppressed by the mother that had no
time to bond with them. To control the money, the government paid them
to use their babies as a social experiment. It is 2013, and I'm listening to a news flash where a government system has failed children yet again, as a Judge in Florida is
being charged with sentencing youth to years of detention to support his lavish
lifestyle at the expense of systematic abuse to hundreds of children.
"Trends in Premarital Childbearing: 1930 -
1994, a study was done on the percentage of first births conceived out of wedlock have almost tripled since the 1930s, according to the U.S. Census. Growth in the proportion of first births born premaritally grew five-fold to women ages 15 to 29. The comparable figure for African American women doubled, from 43 percent to 86 percent of first births to women 15-19 years.
"STREET
SHOWER 07/19/1937", a little black girl playing in the
streets, having the time of her life, while others watch on. Faceless,
nameless, but as I turned the pages of the LIFE Magazine, no other images of
black girls, black women. So I read on and see the face of Wartime children and
the caption "Wartime Childhood," emotionless faces, blank stares. I wonder what has happened behind the blankness. I wonder why it takes the
torture and unimaginable beating of a child to change laws in the United States
to protect them from their own families, which is not black or white, and why
even in the 21st century, the moral compose is still not centered.
Update 1/15/13: I am dismayed to report that the Sojourner Truth sculpture was recently vandalized. The sculpture was pushed off of the pedestal and broke in pieces on the ground. It is still unclear whether the sculpture can be repaired. I’ve included a photo of the broken sculpture at the bottom of this post.
