Paper Trails Response
When I first walked into the “Paper Trails� exhibit, not too many of the
works really moved me. Some of the pieces seemed to be as shallow as the
paper cutouts used to create them and in return, I did not stay long at the
pieces to try to figure them out.
I came to a smaller corridor where finally
I met with images that made me stay and gawk for a while, one of these being
“Vanilla Nightmares #3,9, &10" by Adrian Piper, created back in 1986. Walking
up to these pieces of old, tarnished news papers reminded me of going through
old newspapers and catalogues you find stored in your attic, almost like
going back into time. Walking closer to the sheets of old newspaper tacked to
the wall, these images started to pop out of the pages. At first it seems
like these images were not deliberately and some what chaotically printed on
these pages of newspaper, almost like the printing company made a mistake,
but a closer look comes to reveal that these images are actually drawn onto
these pages.
Being a passionate drawer myself, I was a little amazed by the realistic
look of these images sketched over articles, and I admired that Adrian Piper
dared to draw over printed articles and was moved by her ability to
incorporate these images into the paper as if maybe they belonged next to the
articles they were illustrated by. Taking a closer look at the images, I
noticed not only were these images of African-American people, but they were
drawn in such a manner that reminded me of images of oppressed slaves or
similar issues such as the disturbing images shown over the television back
when the civil rights movement was going on. I also began to see the
connection between the articles and the images as well. Each image of an
oppressed African-American was shown next to an article with a topic having
something to do with a professional and powerful Caucasian-American, often
involving politics. Putting both the articles and the images together, it
came to my attention that this was a political piece. These powerful images
of discrimination drawn in graphite and charcoal on newspaper were addressing
racial issues, affirmative action, alienation, and current affairs,
especially the ones that were taking place a few decades ago.
This project that she started by taking all of these newspaper articles and
creating some kind of opposing image to represent the discrimination of
African-American people really moved me to look at the deeper meaning of some
of the things we read in the newspaper today. I think that she made a smart
move by creating these semi-controversial images/pieces and attacking some of
society in such a way to get her point across in a strong way, but also in a
non-insulting way for the rest of society (i.e. insulting dirty-white
politicians but not insulting the rest of white America).