First Look: Ariel René Jackson
From MoHA Wiki
Art in America
Review • January 31, 2019
| Author |
|
| Link | First Look: Ariel René Jackson |
| Description | INSIDE A RUSTED, twenty-foot-long trailer cage in a gravel lot on Austin’s east side, dozens of balloons encased in layers of dirt and pigmented chalk dangled in the breeze over a bed of local soil. As spring turned to summer in Central Texas, the installation was blasted with airborne debris and heavy rains. The balloons withered. Chunks of soil and chalk broke off, revealing the balloons’ true colors of black and white. |
| Event |
Ariel René Jackson designed this site-specific sculpture, Color Composition (2018), to correspond to redlining maps that Austin used in the 1920s and ’30s to segregate black communities from white ones. The balloons’ color distribution represented “hazardous” (black) and “desirable” (white) neighborhoods designated by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation in 1935. Nearly a century later, the effects of redlining remain visible, especially in rapidly gentrifying East Austin. Color Composition was installed in the neighborhood as part of the Cage Match Project, a series of outdoor works at the artist-run Museum of Human Achievement.
