The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.~Albert Camus
ONEMAN, an artistic expression of radical protest activism, critiques and poses challenging and provocative questions regarding freedom, justice and equality in America—specifically, how racial, social, cultural and economic factors affect and dictate our perceptions and relationship to issues relating to freedom, justice and equality. As well as the role that America’s racist (slavery and Jim Crow) past still plays in our present, collective, conversation on freedom and democracy; particularly as it relates to questions regarding the psychological, social, political and economic impact of that past on African American’s today.
The work also provokes thought in regards to national identity, individuality, conformity, social conditioning and or socialization, and our collective adherence to social and or economic, labels, modes, structures, systems and institutions.
As artistic representation of Albert Camus’ idea of liberation achieved through the act of one becoming so absolutely free that their very existence is an act of rebellion,the work—challenging societal boundaries—is a radical expression (action and praxis) of freedom manifested in the personification of the rebellious individual who, as a conflicted member of society and product of socialization, faces many paradoxical challenges in the pursuit of absolute LIBERATION.
i am ONEMAN...escape slave, iconoclast, provocateur, lone dissenter and consummate builder
are they ours; do we own them? Have we created and defined them or have they merely been manufactured for us?
do they actually exist, are they figments of our imagination? Are we, in fact just like the pathetic prisoners shackled in Plato's cave, sitting in complete darkness staring at the phantasmagoric shadows of dancing puppets cast on a wall before us by mysterious and nefariously deceptive puppeteers?
have we ever really known them? Were they systematically deracinated and effaced from our memory? Are they ancient artifacts that lie buried deep beneath the decaying rubble of our blissful ignorance? Perhaps they too, like those distant stars that are shrouded from view beneath the shadowy blanket of big city lights, remain out of reach and elusively hidden from us?
what and where is the human connection? Can you FEEL...are you FREE...can we still RE-MEMBER
are mysteries buried in the BLACK