As a part of an internship curatorial project, I curated the show Snickers That Turn Into Livable Joy:

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“I think it's very important to look back. I don't think we do it often enough. I think sometimes looking back leads to kind of -- depression and stasis, which isn’t good. But, looking forward without any kind of deep historical feeling of connectedness-- it’s no good either.” Kara Walker, Kara Walker: "A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby" | Art21 "Extended Play", 2014. 

 

Within art, history is constantly being confronted, with humorous takes from Edouard Manet’s Olympia to Betye Saar’s Liberation of Aunt Jemima. Music, books, television, and movies are all engulfed by history’s beauty and ugliness. History, as we know it, is really storytelling. Much of the history taught through America leads to narratives that uphold white supremacist beliefs.Which then confects a narrative that dismisses and disempowers BIPOC.

 

In Snickers That Turn Into Livable Joy, humor, wit, and criticism become a path to joy in the gallery. Snickering is a jeering type of laughter. This laughter is directed at the ridiculous nature of the exclusionary art historical canon. BIPOC through this exhibition can now be “in on the joke” rather than the butt of the joke. 

The term “livable joy” is a way of stating a kind of happiness that is reachable, possible, and worth striving for. This show brings representation of BIPOC and artistic vision to the forefront. It does not wait for affirmation from the institution, but rather responds to performative activism with real doing. The work of these artists stands in balance to years of the suppression and marginalization of POC & womxn artists. From Derek Walker’s gleeful afro-futuristic “Gem in I” to Ewuresi Archer’s disorienting battle-cry “Free Forever,” audiences are propelled forward into a new chapter of the art historical narrative.