I am not alone in feeling the weight of this week. I don’t think there are enough words to express my frustration with what is happening right now in Ferguson, MO, however when I see this picture today taken at a Freshman orientation at Howard University, I am reminded of the realities of the unspoken burdens we bear just by living in our beautiful skin. My post is not meant to be political or racial, but I would be remiss if I did not express my feelings through this forum. I am seeing too many eerie reminders of our inability to learn and grow from our past. Generations before us worked too hard and sacrificed too much. It pains to me see History repeating itself in subtle ways.
In using art as some form of catharsis, this piece by Glenn Ligon is an apropos nod to Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”.
Text:
“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of those Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids–and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination–indeed, everything and anything except me.”~ Ralph Ellison
Culture Shock Art 