In our world we are whole, 2023

Related Tactics

wall installation: 43; x 14’ vinyl and latex paint

takeaway: 11” x 17” xerox copy print

In Our World We Are Whole is a project by Related Tactics (Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya, and Nate Watson) featuring a pie chart of demographic data that describes a lack of representation of Black and Indigenous people and communities of color in institutional and glass studio leadership and tenured glass program faculty positions across the field. But we also know that those forces are not the sum total of our existence: we are more than whiteness’s lack. That sliver is only a piece of the infinite creativity, community, and knowledge we contribute to the ecosystem we share. Here we re-situate that data visualization within a Black field that stands in for our expansiveness. Text on the wall summarizes the points in our printed take away that raise critical considerations in building a more equitable field for the future.

In Our World We Are Whole was commissioned by the Museum of Glass, Tacoma for the exhibition A Two-Way Mirror: Double Consciousness in Contemporary Glass by Black Artists.

Exhibition history:
A Two-Way Mirror: Double Conciousness in Contemporary Glass by Black Artists, Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA (2023)

A Two-Way Mirror, at the Museum of Glass is an exhibition of contemporary Black artists who have used glass to create work that deconstructs social, cultural, gender, and racial identity concerns. The artists range in background from African American, to British, to Puerto Rican. Each artist uses glass to reflect thoughts and bodies that have historically been fraught with exploitation. Due to its reflectivity and translucence, glass is an apt medium to interrogate identity constructs such as the theory of double consciousness presented by W.E.B. Du Bois in his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk.

In this exhibition, we explore the historical representation of Black people through the medium of glass, ranging from work that borrows the abstraction of African art by exploiting the sophistication of its planar shifts to the production of traditional glass fetish objects like blackamoor pieces. The perception of self is always warring with that of the outside. Glass art has been predominantly devoid of access for historically marginalized people. This was in large part due to the cost of production, racial oppression, and the class division between artist and artisan. This exhibition cannot rectify this but can explore inequity of this history and offer works by artists of African descent that tell their own stories.

As the production of glass has become more accessible, the medium has become more open to different voices. This is an age of pluralism. People of different racial, gender, sexual, and class identities all can now tell their stories through art. Glass is a medium that reflects not only the inner truths of both the viewers and makers, but that of western society as a whole and all the clandestine and muddied histories that lie within its core. The beautiful parts, abject parts, resilient parts, and the opaque all make themselves more evident as the viewer continues to stare through the glass.

Exhibiting Artists: Anthony Amoako-Attah, Radcliffe Bailey, Layo Bright, Crystal Z. Campbell, Chris Day, Cheryl Derricotte, Alejandro Guzman, Mildred Howard, Jason McDonald, Parfums de Vigny, Ebony G. Patterson, Pellatt & Green, Related Tactics, Salviati and Company, Joyce J. Scott, Shikeith, Therman Statom, Renée Stout, Barbara Earl Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas, Leo Tecosky, Kara Walker, Fred Wilson