Color-ism
by WORK/PLAY (Danielle McCoy and Kevin McCoy)
July 20 – Sept. 3, 2018
The Gallery at The Kranzberg
Danielle McCoy is an artist, educator, writer. She is a self-taught conceptual artist that intertwines printmaking techniques with sewing, quilt-making, and hand-dyed textiles into her interdisciplinary art practice. By aiming to promote strength and togetherness among women of color, her work explores gender and identity by addressing issues rooted in race and inequality in America. Through small run publications, installation pieces, site-specific works, and programming, her practice serves to build safe spaces of belonging by incorporating spirituality and intentionality into her work.
Kevin McCoy utilizes serigraphs, publications, time-based work and installations to challenge master narratives while investigating representation, identity, and wide-spread disparities within the United States. It is through research, materials, and form where complex histories and the deconstruction of historical images can be further examined. He is currently enrolled in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis Missouri.
Together they form the interdisciplinary duo named WORK/PLAY. Their work has been collected privately and their work has appeared at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York, projects+gallery in St. Louis, The Wassaic Project in New York, The Beard, and Weil Gallery in Massachusetts and The Lillstreet Gallery in Chicago. They have also participated in a host of group panels and lectures at the St. Louis Artists’ Guild, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and Wheaton College in Norton, MA.
Statement
“She was so black she scared me. Midnight black, Sudanese black. I’m light-skinned, with good hair, what we call high yellow.”
-Toni Morrison, an excerpt from God Help the Child
The portrayal of black bodies and blackness through mainstream media, movies, and television weighs heavily on one’s psyche and shines a harsh light on what beauty and acceptance should look like. Promoting darker skin was not the accepted brand in America, while lighter, fairer skin tones were the preference, as it is still seen today. Who has the right to define blackness? From a young age, black children develop a thick, callus skin deflecting the verbal and physical discrimination that spews from the lips of bodies that mirror them. What sounds like cruel rhetoric coming in the form of a diss, in turn, becomes a joke, and we laugh to ease the pain.
‘Color-ism’ explores the internal discrimination against dark-skinned people within the black community dating back to the 18th century. With shades varying from a very light complexion, nearly white where one can pass, to the deepest, darkest, rich browns that are nearly black, the artists will explore the love and hatred of color.
