Posted on
2021-08-02
Centered on Kent’s series of the same title made between 1968 and 1969, the exhibition marks the first time heroes and sheroes has been exhibited in New York in its entirety.
In the summer of 1965, following the Watts Uprising in Los Angeles, Kent reproduced the front page of the Los Angeles Times within her work my people. While in previous years, Kent had appropriated text from consumer and mass culture, my people is the first example of Kent using appropriation as a direct response to the socially charged events of her time. The paper’s headlines were rotated and partially obscured by a swath of red, in which Kent handwrote a text attributed to Maurice Ouellet, a priest and civil rights activist who participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches earlier that year. Ouellet’s words form a rebuttal to the paper’s racially charged headlines describing the Uprising as a “Blood Hungry Mob.” In response, Ouellet’s quote reads: “Youth is a time of rebellion. Rather than squelch the rebellion, we might better enlist the rebels to join that greatest rebel of his time-Christ himself.”
Opposite – road signs (part 1 and 2), 1969
Exhibition runs through to August 13th, 2021
Andrew Kreps Gallery
22 Cortlandt Alley
10013
New York
www.andrewkreps.com
