As I sat down to draft an introduction statement for (un)sterile soil my news feed is overwhelmingly flowing with news of George Floyd and protests. I struggle to move forward. I struggle to find words. The words blocked inside do not want to come out to be the face of this exhibition. So just know that I, too, am tired.
(un)sterile soil is about the death and memory of Black bodies killed by law enforcement. It is about what happened to Breonna Taylor, and every Black man, woman, and child before them. It aims to create a legacy by shifting the perspective. It moves the narrative away from the case file — away from the media coverage to reinstate human status. It examines the murder site from above to below the surface to analyze the essence of trauma to create memory away from our news feeds. It holds the ones we lost with care.
Earlier in the process of developing (un)sterile soil I had to take a moment of pause. To question: why is this exhibition still important amidst a global pandemic?
We as a world are facing new struggles and new losses from the COVID-19 outbreak. For me I was searching for what it meant to put together an exhibition without the tactilely and meditative process of my practice. Something I was yearning for. That space of escape as my hands connect to my materials, as my body loosens, and my thoughts are simmered. Instead all my materials, my studio, and my tools were all tucked in one place — inside a computer. Which is nothing I am unprepared for — my fourteen year design career has prepared me for this virtual moment. The struggle resided, in combating the emotions of the current environment to enter the headspace. To try and engage my practice and submit to the research. The research that is changing more rapidly than one can keep up with. And the daunting fact is that even a global pandemic does not stop police or civilians from stripping away Black life.
A lynching in 2020. Another brother who inevitably was smeared by the media, it's the story that is told again and again. (un)sterile soil is important right now because we cannot run. We cannot live. We cannot breathe.
With peace & love,
amf
P.S. This site will develop over the course of seven weeks. New content will be released every Monday. You can sign up for reminders by clicking the ‘Get Notified’ button in the footer. Or follow me on Instagram (@ashley.freeby). I hope you tune in and share (un)sterile soil with whomever needs it.
Thank you’s
I’d like to take this moment to thank Andy Johnson, who is putting in as much time, energy, and care into this exhibition as I am. Thank you for believing in the work and for trusting me as we experience this process of a virtual exhibition together.
I’d also like to thank all the contributing writers, artists, and scholars. This time in our lives are full of intense emotions and uncertainties and I deeply appreciate the willingness to carved out space in order to contribute to this project.
Shout out to my family, friends, and co-workers who listen, check-in, and say the things that needed to be heard. <3
Segment 148 is dedicated to George Floyd.
This segment will be documented every week to reveal the growth and decay over 7 weeks.
Curating In A Crisis
It goes without saying that our relationship to curatorial practice and the carefully orchestrated production of exhibitions as we knew it has changed, some may argue irrevocably. In this moment, both myself and many of those I know closely in the field are facing deep levels of exhaustion, fatigue, and a dull, yet persistent, listlessness that has seeped its way into our daily lives. The endless years of hustling have caught up to us and we’re forced to reckon with how we move forward. Thus when Ashley Freeby and I began our discussions of what a digital-type exhibition would look and feel like, we began with how we felt in our bodies at that precise moment, and allowed that to be our guide.
We quickly understood that in order to accomplish anything we were going to have to listen to our minds and bodies first — a practice often talked about and endlessly dissected in the art world, but rarely ever given the actual space to embody and experiment. Our relationship to art, art-making, and art objects looks completely different than the way it did only a few months ago, and thus this change in process requires that we also re-think and re-shape our relationship to our bodies. COVID-19 brings about the brutal reality that our work will always be contingent upon our health, both as an individual and as a community. It also spotlights the ways in which we collectively deny the body and mind, and overlook certain types of bodies and minds. The shadow of precarity follows us all, though we tend to want to believe that we are somehow immune.
Nonetheless, and what I believe Ashley Freeby’s project (un)sterile soil points to, is that we must consider and speak truth to the inequalities that existed before this crisis, have become exacerbated because of this crisis, and have the potential to persist and intensify in the aftermath of this crisis. Black lives in America have lived under a model of crisis and precarity since the country’s inception, and as we’ve seen in the past few months and days, not even a global pandemic can curtail the force of a white supremacist culture that is designed to extinguish Black life. It’s an inconvenient truth, and for most white people, it’s an uncomfortable truth. The acknowledgement of its existence by white people does not preclude its existence. In fact, the perpetuation of a white supremacist ideology is contingent upon the silent and subconscious consent of individuals and communities. The less we talk about it, the more it grows.
It’s with this exhibition and research project that we hope to continue to speak truth to the complicated reality of white supremacy in America and the insidious ways in which Black and brown lives are forced to live under a culture of surveillance, control, and violence, often with no end in sight. For four hundred years, white supremacy has metastasized and reached every inch of this country, that’s nearly half a millenium. For our current trajectory to change, we must move in a different direction, one that requires us to rethink and invest in our communities. As we’ve already seen in the outset of this pandemic, nothing is permanent...everything is in a constant state of change and evolution.
Andy Johnson
Director, Gallery 102