Featured Artist: Bayeté Ross Smith

 

A Black-and-white photograph of a young Black boy with a short afro, smiling at the camera. He’s wearing a turtleneck and a jacket layered over that; his hands clasp each other over a piece of wood. Superimposed over his face and chest are target practice symbols, as if from a gun range.
Post Racial America: At least There’s A Black President, 2013. 22” x 30
A similar Black-and-white photo of a twenty-something Black man, wearing a DKNY hoodie and Kangol hat, looking directly at the camera, target practice symbols superimposed over his face and chest. He is looking directly at the camera with a neutral expression on his face. Unlike in the first picture, there are multiple bullet holes in the paper around his head and chest; his left eye, nose, and half of his mouth are almost completely shot off. A thin frame holds the bullet-torn piece of paper.
Beretta 9mm and Shotgun (from the Taking AIM series), 2010. 24″ x 32
A stack of boomboxes in an art gallery in a neat tight shape—five boomboxes wide, and fourteen boomboxes tall. Most of these boomboxes are black, but there are more colorful ones there as well and a wide range of eras—ranging from radios to tape players to CD players. At the base of the sculpture is a long row of cassette walkmans.
Got The Power: Brooklyn, 2014. Sculpture Installed at BRIC Arts Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, 2′ x 8′ x 11′