Kimberly Marie Ashby, American
Black Death, 2020
Kimberly Marie Ashby is a Philadelphian artist, activist, and doctoral candidate. In her multimedia artworks, she makes visible social justice issues in order to benefit the mental health of marginalized communities. Her collage Black Death addresses various pressing issues from 2020 – police brutality, racial inequity, mental health, and Covid-19. In this piece, a black woman is shown in grief, with her face held in two pairs of hands. This distressed woman is superimposed on a rugged graveyard, which is actually from a Brazilian cemetery struggling to keep up with the coronavirus death toll. By combining these two emotionally heavy images, Ashby demonstrates the overwhelming effects of both coronavirus and policy brutality on the physical well-being and mental health of the BIPOC communities. Label by Tori Erisman