"There are no tyrannies that would not try to limit art, because they can see the power of art. Art can tell the world things that cannot be shared otherwise. It is art that conveys feelings."

 - Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine 

Kerry James Marshall

(c)image: Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, NY, and Koplin Del Rio, CA
Heirlooms and accessories, 2002
Photography , 3 x (144.7 x 137.7 cm)
ink, paper

Marshall based his Heirlooms and Accessories (2002) on a widely circulated photo from 1930. It shows a white crowd at the lynching of two black men in Marion, Indiana. Marshall digitally re-works the photograph, rendering it fuzzy (in a process called ‘ghosting’). He sets the photos of three women from the crowd in lockets with chains, giving a double meaning to the word ‘accessories’. These women looked to the camera. By focusing on the three women instead of the black victims of the lynching, Marshall transforms the commemorative function of the original documentary photograph. Here he gives this violent act form in a wry sort of heirloom or memento, passing down both the history of the event as well as three ‘accessories’ to it.