Freedom: The American Hustle
Opening reception Saturday, Sept. 22, 6-9 p.m.
The exhibit takes its title, and much of its inspiration, from seminal films from the 1970’s Blaxploitation genre: Sweet, Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), Superfly (1972), and The Mack (1973). Two of these films will be screened on the Webster Groves campus as part of the Webster Film Series the weekend of Sept. 8-9.
Freedom: The American Hustle is a multi-media exhibit by St. Louis artists John K. Blair and Vaughn Davis Jr. It features video, installation, paintings, textiles and photographic collage while exploring the challenging and demeaning characterization of black America in the post-Civil Rights 20th century. Blair and Davis give fullness to characters whose previous development were limited by context or conflict.
It is from these realities that Blair and Davis began to explore the voices of those who had been left behind. Where was their American Dream? For many of these, whose conflict is partially captured in the Blaxploitation films, they were left with few options beyond what the title of this exhibit articulates: hustling. We see a parallel in speaking more deeply of the complexity of such stereotypes, evoking Childish Gambino’s “This is America,” where a choir sings “get your money, black man,” and Glover appears with a weapon, simultaneously representing the stereotype and annihilating it.
There’s a story here; there are people here with their own disappointments and the things they are fighting for, stepping into this survival while despising their only options for accessing resources.
America in 2018 is the perfect cultural time to consider these voices. Blair and Davis do just that, through video, installation, paintings, textiles and photographic collage, walking straight and unflinchingly into the full potential psychology of these characters.
Arcade Contemporary Art Projects
Webster University Gateway campus
812 Olive Street
downtown St. Louis
