Conveying Emotion

Jared Thorne - "Black and Blue" Exhibition

When I walked into the gallery to get a glimpse of Jared Thorne's "Black and Blue" exhibition, the first thing I noticed was how bare it seemed to be compared to previous exhibitions. There were only two 3-dimensional segments, and the rest of the installment consisted of very similar-looking photographs lining the walls. In the few minutes before Jared was set to begin his talk, I circled the gallery once and found myself mildly confused, but also intrigued.

Jared explained that, as a Black artist, he wants to explore the idea of "Black identity" in the U.S. and how certain experiences are shared by most or all of the Black community. The pictures, he explained, stemmed from his own childhood experience of being the only non-white student in his class. His parents had decided to move to a predominantly White neighborhood and school with the intentions of "betterment," but in reality Jared only ended up feeling alienated among his White classmates, experiencing what he called "privileged isolation" and "access without belonging."

The photographs lining the gallery walls all present the same general image: a White class with only one or a maximum of two Black students. And since the photographs span several classes and schools, it is obvious that this phenomenon was not an experience singular to Jared, but something that many other Black Americans faced as well. The 3-D portions of the exhibition--a suspended afro-like sculpture and a recreation of a 1980s living room with a Malcolm X speech playing on repeat--continue Jared's theme of connecting to what he referred to as the "collective unconscious" of Black Americans.

Circling back to the main entrance after the talk and seeing the title, "Black and Blue" in big black letters against the white wall, I felt everything sort of click into place. The phrase "black and blue" usually refers to being bruised, but Jared meant it in a different sense, as in being Black and feeling blue. I thought that the wordplay was very clever, and it fit into the installation perfectly. I definitely felt that I understood the exhibition much more than I had before the talk. Jared's works carry a lot of social commentary, as art often does, and I might have grasped the concept better from the start if I had the same experience of growing up as a Black American. However, while my experiences don't match Jared's, his idea is still clearly showcased in his art in a way that can be understood by anyone from any background.