What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1492257
SEAN CLANCY Arkansas Democrat-Gazette H ow Many Bubbles Are in a Bar of Soap" is not only the title of an artwork in a powerful and thought- provoking new exhibit at a Little Rock gallery, it's a question that some Jim Crow-era Black voters in Alabama were required to answer to cast their ballots as part of a "literacy test." Of course, the answer is impossible to know and was one of several ways Black people in the South were kept from voting. The fraught history of tactics and policies designed to disenfranchise Black voters in America is the topic of "Where Do We Go From Here? II: Exploring Gerrymandering and Voting," an exhibit by Pine Bluff native Kevin Cole that will be up at Hearne Fine Art through March 4. The exhibit features Cole's mixed media and sculptural pieces made of aluminum. It debuted last year at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia in Atlanta and was sponsored by the museum's Working Artist Project. This version of the show actually begins with works displayed in Pyramid Art, Books & Custom Framing, the store owned by Garbo Hearne that is adjacent to her gallery. Viewers first see "Black to the Future," a large wooden piece that looks like a mailbox painted black with white markings and is labeled "Ballot Box." On a shelf in the box are a stack of unanswerable questions that were once asked of Black voters, according to the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration in Montgomery, Ala. Impossible Answers Hanging like silver drapes on each side of the double doors leading into the gallery are works made of etched aluminum strips. On the left is "Creating Obstacles: Florida" in which the state is depicted encircled by the phrase "Make America Responsible in 2024." Written into the aluminum are references to court cases and Rosewood, the Black community in Florida that was attacked and destroyed in 1923 by a mob of white people. To the right is "Creating Obstacles: North Carolina," with the words "Stronger Together Yet So Far Apart," "NAACP," "Dixiecrat" and the names of court cases scrawled into the bright surface. In the gallery are etched pieces from Cole's "Dirty South" series in which he has cut from aluminum works in the shapes of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama and Mississippi, states where Black votes have been suppressed (Tennessee is displayed in the bookstore space). Applied to areas of each state "map" is dirt from the respective state. (The Arkansas piece has dirt from Pine Bluff, Little Rock and Fayetteville, Cole says.) There are shards of aluminum embedded into the soil, and references to events in Black history written onto areas of the maps — the Little Rock Nine and so-called "sundown towns" are pointed out in the Arkansas piece. The way Cole incorporates dirt with the aluminum creates a powerful symbol that reminds us of the ground that we share. "I thought about some of the land that Black folks helped build in this country," he said during an interview last month. "And also how a lot of Blacks were buried and not given proper funerals." The exhibit includes smaller versions of the "Black to the Future" ballot box, most of which are colorfully painted and have titles like "How Many Bow Ties Come in a Box?," "How Many Seeds in an Okra?" and "How Many Marbles in the Jar?" Cole, who has lived in Atlanta since 1985, recounts interviews he and his friends conducted with older Black voters across the South who were asked these and similar questions. "How many black-eyed peas in a bag," he says one person told him. "A LITTLE ROCK 38 WHAT'S UP! FEBRUARY 12-18, 2023 Barriers To Voting Little Rock exhibit considers race and politics Artist Kevin Cole, who grew up in Pine Bluff and lives in Atlanta, created "Where Do We Go From Here? II: Exploring Gerrymandering and Voting," an exhibit currently on display at Hearne Fine Art in Little Rock. (Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Tom Meyer)