Increase Risk with Emotional Faith

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

When artist Keven Cole was 18, his grandfather showed him a tree in his Tarry, Arkansas, neighborhood from which African American men were routinely lynched for attempting to vote. His grandfather added that when these men were killed, their neckties would be wrapped around the hanging noose. The ties were a warning to other black men that African Americans should not pretend to the status or privileges of white people by exercising their rights as citizens or reaching above their prescribed underclass status. Cole’s chilling memory of this event inspired him to incorporate the abstracted form of the necktie in his work. By doing so, he seeks to transform this gruesome legacy into his contemporary vision of the inner strength, resiliency, and self-determination of African American men. Three dimensional sculpture of necktie shapes painted, etched, bent and curled in multiple directions. The various shapes are painted with juxtaposing bold colors and patterns such as stripes, circles, splashes and geometric shapes. Multiple layers of acrylic paint are used to add texture to the geometric designs. The piece is made using scattered debris left by Hurricane Katrina.

Catalog date

2008

Recorded subjects

African American; Art; Civil Rights; Race discrimination; Violence

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