painting >
lid front: canvas painting with a wooden frame
black paper box: hand-painted texts visible in an open paper box (next image)
One day in 2015, I was suddenly inspired to create this work based on my own stand-up comedy script.
This image on canvas, to me, personally, represents the American Slavery (a view from a window in the slave ships on the middle passage). This work is my personal reflection on teaching art as the only non-black Professor in an all-black art department at a historically black college in one of the world's largest university systems in 2014 when other universities had only one or no "non-white" art faculty member in art departments in the United States. The "lack of diversity" in the department was addressed in the following 3 years. I consider this work a snapshot of the “black” section inside the “white” institution: limited freedom within the protected area.