Chris Christion
Reclamation
Exhibition
Reclamation
2022
C.J. Rodman Center for the Arts: Caestecker Gallery, Ripon College
The exhibition Reclamation explores themes of history, identity, religion, and inherited social perceptions. Consisting of a collection of drawings and video work the exhibition combines works from two ongoing series The Fractures Series (2014 - Present) and The Context Series (2015 – Present).
The exhibition Reclamation explores themes of history, identity, religion, and inherited social perceptions. Consisting of a collection of drawings and video work the exhibition combines works from two ongoing series The Fractures Series (2014 - Present) and The Context Series (2015 – Present).
The Fractures Series (2014 – present) includes renderings of BIPOC victims of police violence. The renderings are drawn with scars, gouges, and fractures as you would find in statues and stolen artifacts that depict BIPOC in museum collections. More than material content; statues carry the power of symbolism. Inspiring an empathy and consideration often not applied to human beings whose resemblance they bear.
In the Context Series (2015 - Present) Christion examines the ways in which Christianity particularly interpretations of scripture have been used to generating racism and ignorance while promoting the values and standards of its Eurocentric leadership. Through the context series, Christion explores Rev James H. Cone’s theory that transcendence (or the act or rising above the limits or boundaries of culturally fixed identity) comes from the ability and the context to express and articulate of ones’ own definition of self.
Mining archives of information from libraries, museums, and the internet Christion examines images of individual and institutional violence against Black and Indigenous People of Color. Developing his own process of reclamation Christion reorders and recontextualizes these images, filtering and re-interpreting narratives often present through his personal lens of lived experiences. Reclamation unearths multiple contexts that mediate between personal and shared narratives.
