ARTIST STATEMENT
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, an iconic work of African American literature, speaks to the very heart of the black experience. The central character of the novel believes he is “invisible”. He is not seen for who he really is. Other’s perceptions of him are clouded by stereotypes, particularly those often assigned to African American men. He feels invisible and this social invisibility speaks to the broader biases, misperceptions and blind spots embedded within American society at large. As the narrative unfolds, we come to understand the “invisible man” as a mirror of our own culturally acquired fears and fantasies regarding those perceived as other. The Presence of Absence’s large-scaled photographic images address the complexities of being both highly visible and invisible at once. Based on the visual phenomenon of motion parallax in which a single image changes in relationship to the angular position of the viewer, each human-scaled portrait presents a simple frontal image of a young black man. As the position of the viewer shifts, however, a bold textual message appears to float on its surface, revealing these questions: “Am I Standing in Your Blind Spot?” or “Am I a Figment of Your Imagination? The portraits along with their accompanying texts, compel the viewer to reflect on one’s immediate and innermost responses: Who is represented? What assumptions do we ourselves project onto the image? Who is implicated? What are the effects of hypervisibility/invisibility on victims as well as perpetrators?
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Marianetta Porter is an artist and Professor Emerita at the University of Michigan. Grounded in a study of African American history, her artworks often explore questions of race, identity and representation. Her pursuits, in the studio as well as in the classroom and community, strive to promote conversations across divides. As a mixed media artist, a broad range of materials and processes inform her practice. Through the language of visual art, Porter seeks to draw a correlation between historic memory and modern African American life. Increasingly words, poems or written reflections are combined into her artwork, exploring the visual and poetic possibilities of objects, stories, and language. Porter is the recipient of numerous awards—among them are the University of Michigan Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award, the Rockwood National Fellowship and the Smithsonian Research Fellowship awards. Her portfolio also includes residency appointments at the San Francisco Center for the Book, Haystack Mountain and the Arrowmont Schools of Crafts. Her work has been exhibited in Germany and China as well as in the California African American Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, Charleston’s Spoleto Festival, the Harriet Tubman Museum, and the Hampton University Museum of Art.
© Marianetta Porter