Juneteenth

As a young black woman living in America, I am very familiar with the plight of black people and our history of slavery. This past year Juneteenth was highly commercialized and it truly bothered me. I decided to channel that annoyance into this set called From Slave to Criminal. Ava DuVernay created an amazing documentary for Netflix called 13th which goes in depth about the fact that America's prisons are disproportionately filled with black people. I love the art for the film and that was my inspiration to represent the underbelly of America and the art underneath the nails. For the art to represent the Emancipation Proclamation I decided to look up pictures of the proclamation, and I used some paintings from the Smithsonian Institute's online image of the Emancipation Proclamation. I wanted it to look like two very different sets, the effect of the black and white stripes are very striking and unexpected.

When I started out, I had intended to create a set to CELEBRATE Juneteenth since that's what everyone else was doing, then I thought to myself, what is there to celebrate?! At first glance the nails look pretty with vibrant colors and people, even dogs. If you look closer, you can actually see that it's a slave auction, and people are running from the dogs, and there's a man with a whip. I really wanted to capture what I thought about America as it pertains to black people.

It looks good on the surface but you quickly realize it isn't, and when you turn it over to scrutinize it, you realize it is messy and ugly. Truthfully, talking about Juneteenth enrages me because, there's literally a clause to continue slavery that is being taken advantage of still today.

Artistically though, these were super fun to make, and I had a time painting the words from slave to criminal (backwards!) correctly so that it would be read the right way when I flipped my hands over.

These nails are a little fatter than I would have liked, but they're also one of my earlier art sets. I was still so new to painting and this set was ambitious as hell. I am very proud of the painting of these still, and I hope you enjoy my process. Renee<3