Search results | Digital Grinnell

Title: Bondage and Freedom
Description: This block memorializes the pain and violence inflicted on black bodies in both Haiti and America during the time of slavery. The artist has placed drawings of an active foot and hand, body parts most commonly immobilized by chains and ropes during slavery, at the center of this piece, and surrounded them with leaves, flowers, keys, broken chains, drops of blood, and long-lost pieces of jewelry, items evocative of a past left behind and destroyed at the hands of slavery. These items appear to rotate in a circle around the foot and hand caught in the moments before taking a step or lifting the page of a book, giving the piece an element of movement and the feeling of ceaseless change. This piece encourages the viewer to remember the terribleness of physical bondage and enslavement, yet it also celebrates the liberation from these chains and the physical freedom many of us have come to take for granted. Furthermore, it reminds us to always keep moving towards a brighter future no matter what we may have left behind.
Date Created: 2017
PID: grinnell:25502

Title: Collision
Description: This block is a visualization of the clash between the cosmic forces of nature and the institutions of humankind. This encounter was especially apparent during the revolution in Haiti; the very concept of slavery and the violence that grew from it defies nature in every way. The plantation economy which ran off the energy of slaves turned a lush tropical landscape into flat planes of torture. Confrontation between armed forces over these plantations wreaked havoc on the earth and the destroyed the natural landscape. In this block an image of a classical Greco-Roman building, representing the institutions of a “more civilized” people, collides with the cosmic forces of earth and nature. These forces are commonly called upon in Haitian Vodou ceremonies, making this collision not just one between man and nature but also between ideologies and philosophies.
Date Created: 2017
PID: grinnell:25492

Title: The World
Description: This piece represents an abstract approach to visualizing freedom. The only recognizable forms in this piece are two cotton plants, surrounded by abstract organic forms reminiscent of plant life. At the center of this piece the designs converge to create a shape evocative of a skull or head; yet each viewer might have a different reaction to the organization of forms and shapes. What do you see?
Date Created: 2017
PID: grinnell:25501