Flint Fit

Mel Chin, American

Tracy Reese, American

Flint Fit, 2018

The plastic bottles water that flint residents are forced to drink due to their unsafe drinking water has become a piece of the community landscape. Mel Chin, an artist from Houston Texas, decided that these plastic water bottles shouldn’t create a new environmental hazard; they should go toward something beautiful. Chin worked with residents and community organizers in Flint to collect 90,000 empty plastic water bottles over six weeks. These bottles were converted into a yarn like fabric through a process where they are broken down, melted, turned into microchips and then became fabric. The actual designs were created by New York fashion designer and Michigan native Tracy Reese. Chin and Reese includes Flint’s manufacturing history within the work of art by using styles from the 1940s when General Motors factory was present in the town. This exhibition is also supposed to signify the resiliency of the people of Flint. Label by Isabel Schreur

Flyover

Ti-Rock Moore, American

Flyover, 2014

In this work artist Ti-Rock Moore is concerned with the neglect and violence that black communities experienced after Hurricane Katrina due to the government’s inequitable handling of relief efforts. She combines the famous image of George Bush flying over New Orleans surveying the damage with an image of African Americans working on a cotton plantation, along with an American flag covered in racial epithets. She is highlighting the deep history of systemic racism in the US and the fact that this racism was deeply entrenched in the relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina. The calm seeming indifference on Bush’s face is jarring when juxtaposed with this imagery of racialized poverty and the suffering after Hurricane Katrina. Moore, a white woman, focuses on race in her work as one way to combat white silence and provoke discussion. Every person, white and black, must fight against racism; white silence is a form of compliant racism which perpetuates the status quo. Label by Savannah Singleton

NGC 6853 (Night Skies)

Matthew Brandt, American, born 1982

NGC 6853 (Night Skies), 2016

This photograph is of one of Matthew Brandt’s displays, NGC 6853, in his series, Night Skies. While this series appears to be made out of a series of prints, these are actually backdrops of black velvet that have had cocaine spilt onto them. This display symbolizes deception through the use of natural objects. Similar to the way that after filtration, water may appear clear even though it is contaminated, this display at first looks like a print meant to capture the beauty of a clear night sky however, it is actually made up of a toxic drug with the ability to poison, kill, and ruin lives. Label by Jordan Stofko