By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
ArtPrize has barely been open a week and Ti-Rock Moore’s piece has already been called “moving” and “powerful.”
The piece, titled “Flint” is brown water constantly flowing from a bright white water fountain. The purpose of the piece, signals the ongoing situation in the majority black town, as well as, the extreme limitations placed on communities of color due to flawed infrastructures that privilege the needs of affluent and of the predominantly white communities, according to Moore’s ArtPrize artist statement. In 2014, lead was discovered in the Flint water system after cost-cutting measures. The city still does not have safe water to drink for all of its citizens.
Moore’s piece, which is on display as part of the Fountain Street Church ArtPrize Nine exhibition, recently receive the American Civil Liberties Union Award during a special reception at the church for ArtPrize artists and friends.
“Our Constitution provides for equal protect of the law,” said the jurors’ statement. “Civil rights laws protect against discrimination based on age, race, religion, gender, disability, and national origin. Ti-Rock Moore’s art reveals a stunning example of injustice against people of color based on the condition of municipal finances in the City of Flint, Michigan. People were poisoned because of money.”
Born and raised in New Orleans’ French Quarter, Moore followed disparate career paths before emerging in 2014 with protest works created, in part, in response to the devastating, lingering effects of Hurricane Katrina. At that time, Moore renamed herself in homage to colorful and controversial twentieth-century painter Noel Rockmore, a New Yorker turned New Orleanian who, like Moore, had been the child of artists. Moore’s self-identification (petit or ‘tit in local parlance) with the mercurial Rockmore as a kind of spiritual protégé positions her within both local history and artistic traditions, while her work focuses on dismantling the structures that support racism.
In “Flint,” the public water fountain has long been a passive symbol of separatism in the United States, one of the more visible manifestations of the Jim Crow era. Although the legal dismantling of the Jim Crow system of apartheid took place more than half a century ago, The Unites States remains deeply divided by race and class, according to a press release from Fountain Street Church. In such a volatile historical moment, the role of the artist is paramount, even essential, as a voice that both incites and instructs all of us to not remain complacent and to act upon our beliefs and stand up for what is moral and just, the press release states. If not now, we might ask ourselves, when? We are in just such a moment that requires—no, demands our attention and our action: to either squelch the flames of hatred and intolerance once and for all, or to stand by and watch as we reduce everything to embers.
Fountain Street Church is one of a few ArtPrize venues that award cash prizes to its participating artists. Along with the ACLU Award, which is a $1,000, the church also award a Social Action Committee Award, which was presented to Patrick Foran, Bufafalo, New York, for “State of Exception.” “We were fascinated by how Patrick Foran took iconic media imagery and, with an economy of means, presented a triptych full of foreboding. He reminds us of the power of imagery to form our understanding of the news we are bombarded by each day. The scale of the images and the mastery of craft help crystallize his powerful statement.”
The jurors were Kendall College of Art and Design Professor Emeritus and artist Darlene Kaczmarczyk and artist, social activist, and dedicated ACLU supporter Max Matteson. The jurors also presented two $250 Special Recognition Awards to Rebekah Modrak, of Ann Arbor, for “TheImplicit Jacques Panis on Shinola’s Quest to Revive American Manufacturing,” and Nick Reszet, of Reno, Nevada, for “Transitus.”
Twenty-six artists are featured at Fountain Street Church, 24 Fountain Ave. NE, all who have works that represent the venue’s theme “Art to Change the World: Inspiring Social Justice.” The exhibit is open during regular ArtPrize hours, noon to 8 p.m. Monday – Saturday and noon – 6 p.m. Sunday. For more information about Fountain Street Church and its ArtPrize exhibition, visit http://www.artprize.org/fountain-street-church
