Exhibit examines art of stereotypes
Imagine a place like a center for literacy and learning having its walls plastered with cartoonish images of barefoot hillbilly hags and slovenly bearded men in tattered hats, most surrounded with phonetically spelled sentences that point to a dialect recognizable as "hillbilly."
There is a "souvenir shelf" with such items as a plastic outhouse, lottery tickets and "Mountain Taffy Logs" on it.
In the floor just outside the center's computer lab is a wagon train circle of wooden vehicles, festooned with sails, Confederate flags and signs that say things like "Here comes Truble" and "Look Ye Out."
This installation of consciously degrading material is the work of Delaware native and transplanted Lexingtonian Bruce Burris.
Before you get on the phone to a bounty hunter, let Burris explain what he's trying to do with this barbed mish-mash. He admits he has never visited Eastern Kentucky, and the picture of "hillbilly culture" that comes through this show is not of his making. He has just collected it from second-hand sources and thrown it all together to get a full-blown composite of the cultural identity associated with Appalachia.
The twist is that the sources of the hillbilly stereotype are not necessarily cynical vendors of gag souvenirs or comic strip creators like Al Capp, who have ingrained L'il Abners in the nation's psyche.
Burris says he is pointing the finger at reputable newspapers and magazines and television networks, who sell to the general public the stereotypes he parodies here. He points his finger at the state park system that sells those crockery moonshine jugs and plastic outhouses -- a system run by educated market analysts and professional promoters.
Burris points the finger at venerable institutions like Morehead State University for collecting, promoting and marketing stick roosters and holy-roller evangelical scenes on pine chests as quintessential Kentucky craft and art.
He wonders aloud why Appalshop, for example, seldom if ever makes films about artists in Appalachia who are producing cutting-edge mainstream art, pushing boundaries with high-tech materials or dealing with hot political topics, relevant gender issues or socio-racial concerns. Surely not every single artist southeast of Winchester is a cane carver or gourd painter.
What is behind Burris' barrage is irony, parody, and some pointed questions: Why are seemingly intelligent, right-minded, well-intentioned, politically correct people generating and perpetuating a false and wrong-headed image of Appalachia as if it were Mars, a strange world apart from and unlike the one the rest of us live in? Why are they perpetuating this image of Appalachian people as subhuman, as cartoon people isolated and disadvantaged, stuck somewhere back in time and unable to catch up to contemporary times?
Pretty serious questions. Burris thinks the very picture of Appalachian culture and identity he presents underlies a lot of high-minded as well as low-minded thinking, a lot of real-life stories by unquestioning journalists, a lot of proposed solutions to very real problems.
When looking at this installation, examine your own reaction to the people-stereotypes and the overall picture of "mountain culture" that is being presented. Are you amused by it or repulsed? Do you feel insulted or superior? Do you feel that these cartoons and the environment Burris has created possess any legitimacy or credence?
It was a good move to include work by Christina Godsey to reinforce Burris' own ideas. Godsey is a native of Edmonton, Ky., a town so small it doesn't even have a stoplight, unless you count the flashing light at the four-way stop where two main roads cross. Godsey calls herself a "Philbilly" because her father is a Kentuckian and her mother is a Filipino.
She repetitively uses a photograph of her face to break down the constituent parts of her racial identity. Each photograph is emblazoned with a percentage: "33% Japanese," "8% Chinese," "3% African American," and so on. Each photograph has been altered with paint so that grooming, costume and cultural motifs can be linked to a lowest-common-denominator racial stereotype. In a piece that proclaims the subject "Native American 25%," for example, the hair has been darkened and braided and a teepee has been added to the background.
In a related set of works, Godsey has used racial slurs in conjunction with her face. The quotations are from real life. They are things people have said to her.
A third component of Godsey's part of the show is a shelf with a box on it, containing photographs of her hometown and its people.
The work of both artists is heavy on irony. They both show the absurdity of stereotyping. And they both confront commonly held ideas about cultural and racial identities.
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