Artist Statement Question Bridge

Question Bridge Kickstarter

Here is the Artist Statement for Question Bridge:

This is a critical period in history for the Black community. In recent years, many have been able to transcend racial, cultural and economic boundaries while others have found themselves increasingly confined to the margins of society. Black men are particularly challenged by this paradox. Although a black man is the President of the United States, black men are still severely overrepresented in incarceration and high school dropout rates, and suffer disproportionately from various preventable health risks and as victims of homicide.  Empirical data shows Americans, including Black people, still harbor negative associations with Black males that directly impact their ability to function successfully in this country. Of particular concern are statistics which demonstrate that the over-representation of Black males in the penal system and the disciplinary processes in schools does not correlate to their behavior. In reality, Black males are not more violent, more criminal, or more disruptive than their White male peers. The good news is that a meta-analysis of the social science research shows that there are effective means of overcoming our negative bias about Black males. One of which, is being exposed to more complex, multi-faceted, and whole images and narratives of black males. This is what the Question Bridge project hopes to accomplish.  “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” - W.E.B. Dubois  Question Bridge: Black Males opens a window onto the complex and often unspoken dialogue among Black men, creating an intimate and essentially genuine experience for viewers and subjects, while providing new opportunities for understanding and healing. This project brings the full spectrum of what it means to be “black” and “male” in America to the forefront. “Blackness” ceases to be a simple, monochromatic concept.  By creating an identity container (e.g. “Black” and “Male”), then creating a way of releasing the diversity of identities and thought within that container, we can break the container. Question Bridge strives to make it more difficult to say, “Black Males are___.” 

If we succeed in deconstructing stereotypes about arguably the most opaque and feared demographic in America, then the Question Bridge model can work to overcome limiting assumptions about any demographic.

“Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.” - W.E.B. DuBois

Here are other examples of art statements:

Art Study Org 

Digital Photography School


Main Goal of Writing an Artist Statement is discussing your understanding of your process, ideas, and field. The statement also gives you an opportunity to define the critical conversation you want to engage through your art.  Consider asking yourself these questions:

• What am I doing?
• How am I doing it?
• Why am I doing it?
• What influences me most?
• How does my art relate to the art of my contemporaries?
• What do I want other people to understand about my art?
• Am I unwilling to discuss any aspects of my work? If so, why?

Examples:


“When I made the piece Red Goya, a diptych where two prints from the same negative are juxtaposed in 40×30 and 24×20 formats, I wanted to force an engagement with the question of the viewer’s taste, to examine the power of the physical manifestation of the image to alter its impression on a person. Does the bigger print have more authority because of its relationship to a body viewing it in a space, as something you can’t take in with one glance? Something that envelops you? Or is the smaller print more powerful with its higher resolution? More jewel-like in its intensity of color? More precious in its scale?” –Eileen Quinlan

“My new work deals with emptying my body: ‘Boat emptying, stream entering.’ This means that you have to empty the body/boat to the point where you can really be connected with the fields of energy around you. I think that men and women in our Western culture are completely disconnected from that energy, and in my new work I want to make this connection possible.” –Marina Abramovic

“I use my own constructed image as a vehicle for questioning ideas about the role of tradition, the nature of family, monogamy, polygamy, relationships between men and women, between women and their children, and between women and other women—underscoring the critical problems and the possible resolves. In one way or another, my work endlessly explodes the limits of tradition.” –Carrie Mae Weems
Meaning

I think it would be disastrous if you could say what the message of Hamlet was . . . . everyone is going to come away with something different depending on if they've just left their lovers or if they've just had a child or if they've just been fired.
- Beth Henley

I don't tell people what things mean, but I describe the way they occur, in order to stir people's curiosity.
-Barabara Bloom