In Another’s Hand

Abstract

This project is comprised of a suite of pen and graphite drawings derived from artworks that were included in the exhibition An Art Commentary on Lynching, which was held from February 15–March 2, 1935, at the Arthur U. Newton Galleries, New York. The exhibition was organized by Walter White, then secretary of the NAACP. Given my own work on the history of lynching in the United States, I was curious to learn more about how these artists’ work was received at the time.In creating a series of drawings inspired by the content of this 1935 exhibition, which is documented in the Archives’ Jacques Seligmann & Co. Records, I made the decision to remove all the lynching victims and the ropes from the original images. I also removed the individuals in the lynch mobs as a way of drawing our attention to the natural and built world as rendered through the original artist’s hand. In refusing to re-draw, or re-represent, the lynching victims or mobs, I openly explore the physical process of creating images that must have been traumatic for the artists who produced them, particularly given the controversy surrounding the exhibition and the historical moment in which they were living. This project also meditates on our own time, when historical erasures and fake news threaten our very democracy.