Pharos (Chang y Turner)

This lighting equipment staged in a large square gallery projects two quotes in proximity, one from American cultural critic Jeff Chang, the other from late American socio-political cartoonist Morrie Turner. From Chang’s 2014 book “Who We Be: The Colorization of America,” the first text references the relentless instability of American identity. The second cites a 1967 cartoon by Turner (in Humor in Hue, Negro Digest) that depicts a Black psychotherapist with a troubled African-American man clad in Nazi gear.

Both present and prophetic, this pair of texts in conversation operate as political and social barometers for our contemporary moment. Emerging from searchlights used for stage portraiture and scenography, this setting offers a dialogue simultaneously hopeful, sinister, enigmatic, and enduring.