RODNEY EWING

STRANGE FRUIT

​

​

 

Strange Fruit is based on the facial angle studies of Petrus Camper, an 18th

Century Dutch physician, anatomist, physiologist, anthropologist, paleontologist, and naturalist who stated that African features were the furthest

away from the standards of "classical beauty." For this project, I have appropriated his examples of African features as subjects, to speak for the African American men, women, and children that have perished at the hands of state-sponsored violence.

 

Each board represents a specific individual such as Tamir Rice, or Sandra Bland.  The text on each board is taken from the language that is generated from Google image searches of each person. Many of the descriptions overlap and align with each other, to create an unfortunate and on-going narrative for a community that is often under siege.