While debating demanding topics such as race, religion, or war, it is simple enough to become polarized, and see situations in either black or white, right or wrong. These tactics may satisfy individuals whose position depends on employing policies or implementing strategies that promote specific agendas for a specific constituency. As an artist, it is more important to create a platform that moves us past alliances, and begins a dialogue that informs, questions, and in some cases even satires our divisive issues. Without this type of introspection, we are in danger of having apathy rule our senses. We can easily succumb to a national mob mentality, and ignore individual accounts and memories. With my work I am creating an intersection where body and place, memory and fact, are merged to reexamine human interactions and cultural conditions to create a narrative that requires us to be present and profound.
UPCOMING EXHIBITS
Death + Legacy + The Census:
Systemic + Visual Representations of our Shared Humanity
Presented by the Art+Action Coalition in partnership with Saint Joseph’s Arts Society
Sunday, November 1 at 2pm
RSVP HERE for the Online Event
Justice
Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Novato, CA
November 14, 2020 - December 24, 2020
"Passenger" (Claudette Colvin) Claudette Colvin, refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery Ala. But the NAACP decided not to have her as the face of the boycott, because she was 15, pregnant, and unmarried. The text that accompanies her portrait is by a Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh called "The Last Line of Refugee Descendants". I chose this poem because of the parallels of the Black Civil Rights movement with those of being a refugee in a foreign or hostile place.
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CURRENT EXHIBITS
What Kind of Cool (Will We Think of Next)
Nancy Toomey Fine Arts @ MSP, SF
October 15 - November 30, 2020
CURRENT RESIDENCY
KALA Veteran Residency Program
October 2020
“Game Theory”
A physical representation of the risks that Black people take on a daily basis moving through physical, social, and psychological space.
MEDIA INTERVIEWS
Jud Bergson interviews Rodney Ewing and Tahiti Pehrson’s “What Kind of Cool (Will We Think of Next)?"
Lo-Fi Podcast Ep. 28: Rodney Ewing w/ Guest Host Cindy Shih (USA) Sep 23, 2020
"Stories That Don't Get Told"
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YBCA: Exposing and Empowering Personal Agency by Fiona Ball May 22, 2020
"2020 Census"
CURRENT RESIDENCY
While independently working on separate public art pieces several years ago, Rodney Ewing and Tahiti Pehrson bonded over the Isley Brothers' song For the Love of You, and have wanted to collaborate ever since. Initially, The Space Program had planned to host them in person, but shelter-in-place due to COVID-19 offered a new challenge. Instead, Rodney and Tahiti collaborated at a distance, with Pehrson mailing his intricate paper cut-outs to Ewing, upon which he printed his imagery and text.
RECENT WORK
The mural at 3150 Jackson street was a response by the homeowner of the lack of visibility of BLM in her Pacific Heights neighborhood. I chose to combine the images of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd and the text from Saul Williams's poem "Release" to highlight the existence and complexity of how these individuals lived and died. While the poem makes no direct reference to any of three, the content and beauty of the language serve as a type of eulogy for these individuals.
Shelter In Place
"These works are being created during the mandatory shelter-in-place. It first started out as a way to keep myself busy, but it eventually evolved into a project that allowed me to reuse my large archive of silkscreens in a manner that I continue conversations about Diaspora, place, and identity." All works are one-of-a-kind images printed on vintage assembled ledger paper.
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
The Devil Finds Work
Headlands Center for the Arts
Marin, CA
June 16 – August 15, 2019
Strange Fruit
Solo Pop-Up Exhibition
Cathedral Gallery
Los Angeles, CA
February 8 - 28, 2020
