Carousel Series

Title

Carousel Series

Creator

Isabell, Jalon

@jalonisabell

Description

Artist Statement:
"The main theme of my work is a personal narrative about living in America as an African American. Living in a suburban environment I use the carnival motif in my work to highlight the presumed extravagance of American suburbia from afar, then I contrast that to the racial undertone and discontent of its minority race close up. To represent my concepts, I focus on carnival attractions like rollercoasters, carousels, and rodeo acts. When it comes to colors I use vibrant colors to help draw my audience into the pieces initially, then the worn-down quality in my pieces relates to a false prestige of my living space and the aging of how long the mistreatment of minorities has been going on. The scenes in my print are set to look like the viewer is staring into the piece as if watching a TV show, I use this forced perspective to question the viewers’ role within my work. All the scenery relates to places I've been to or references to pop culture media I have seen in my youth. With the moderately intimate print size, the audience can get a closer look at my prints and inspect them deeper to feel more connected with my narratives. I limit the amount of information provided to my audience to provoke questions about the work.

The central concept surrounding my work is about the fragility of an African American’s life and how it is spun in the media. The perspective of these pieces is in the eyes of law enforcement to make the viewer perform the acts of mistreatment of Black people. For this reason, most of the works have been modeled as carnival games to compel the audience to play them. Within each game, I draw on different issues presented by police brutality such as mass incarceration, innocent killings, and housing issues. To draw people into these games vibrant colors are used to give a friendly appeal to the games, while there are small motifs of black portraiture to tie back to darker themes the pieces speak on. The figures included in the pieces add a sense of life to the game and make the viewer’s involvement feel personal. The use of prints in my work helps create multiple of the same figures to tell of the mass brutalization done by cops. Making multiples also helps with recreating a piece after an audience has interacted with it and aids with making the work more portable and shown to broader participants. Another key element is the layering of information under the fantastical imagery to add a didactic language to the pieces."

Place

Denton (Tex.)

Format

Woodworking, Intaglio, 29 in x 29 in x 21.5 in

Rights

Rights Holder

Isabell, Jalon