Exhibit site
Related Programming (including Clint Smith)
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Review in Ithaca Times
FOUNDER
noun: founder
a person who establishes an institution or settlement.
he was a founder of the nation
verb: founder
(of a ship) fill with water and sink.
Five drowned when their frigates foundered
(of a plan or undertaking) fail or break down, typically as a result of a particular problem or setback.
the talks foundered on the issue of abolition
FOUNDER refers to both an agent and an action, the establishment and the breakdown—of a vessel, society or state. FOUNDER includes works from several series that re-examine the ideals and aspirations that our country claims—and that have been so selectively enacted or attained.
TALL TALES was begun after the 2017 ’Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, joining a larger response to the economic deprivation, structural violence and endemic racism that has persisted for centuries. Images like Thomas Jefferson’s wig ignited with a Tiki Torch explore the myths, distortions and unmet promises of American hegemony and history. Drawings of the felled horses of Confederate Generals speak to the ongoing controversies regarding who and what we choose to memorialize and the malignant consequences of a Civil War that remain unresolved.
FLAYING FATHER, an ongoing cycle, reappraises the ‘founding’ figures and principles of our nation, specifically the five presidents who owned slaves during their presidencies: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and Andrew Jackson. The faults of our typically revered ‘founders’ are often justified or excused as norms of their times. But other founding fathers like John Adams, abolitionists across races, and the enslaved themselves rejected slavery as a barbaric institution. The capitalist ownership of human beings was never acceptable except to those driven by greed, profit and power—and the acquiescent.
The ‘flaying’ refers to the hubris of the mythological Marsyas, who competes with and offends Apollo by playing his flute and whipping everyone into a frenzy—an apt metaphor for the incitement of demagogues, then and now. Accounts of his penalty vary—between having his flayed skin nailed to a pine tree or converted into a wine sack. His cruel fate warns against the self-congratulatory myths and actual practices of our nation—and their ominous repercussions.
The American eagle appears throughout, pronouncing the myth of might and its duplicity. Distorted eagles in the ETERNAL FLAMES series suggest warped perceptions of our virtue and contorted rationales for the denial of liberty and abrogation of so many human rights.
Altogether, FOUNDER exposes a false hagiography, through the viscera of avarice, organs of oppression, cavities of omission, tumors of hubris and sinews of hatred. Multiple operations are necessary to make us whole, with sutures of reparations for an authentic justice.
