F ive television screens sit around a living room among houseplants, table lamps, and easy chairs. Each screen shows a family member of Rekia Boyd, the 22-year-old woman who was killed by Chicago police officer Dante Servin in March 2012. As Boyd’s brother talks about his sister-the way she laughed, how she would brighten a room-the others listen and then respond. The installation, called Present Absence, evokes a “listening circle,” a virtual dialogue about the deceased, that gives the viewer a more personal look at the life lost. Created by filmmakers Salome Chasnoff and Meredith Zielke, it’s one of 120 pieces featured in “Do Not Resist? 100 Years of Police Violence in Chicago,” a citywide art exhibition organized by For the People Artists Collective.
The work of artist and graphic designer Emory Douglas embodies that
combination of art and activism. Douglas, who served as minister of culture
for the Black Panther Party from 1967 until the party disbanded in 1980,
has two prints on display at Hairpin, both from 1970. One shows a black
revolutionary wearing buttons bearing the names of Chicago Panthers killed
by police. The other is a rear-view drawing of a black person in handcuffs
getting hit in the back by an oversize bullet printed with the words“POLICE TERROR, USA.”
Chasnoff has worked with people affected by the criminal justice system for
many years, and she took issue with the way people killed by police are
often portrayed. “There’s a gross misrepresentation of the way they were
killed and why they were killed,” she says. “They’re characterized as
people who had it coming.” With her project, which tells the story of five
individuals killed by CPD, she wanted to create a space for those to become
visible “not as cases or statistics.”
Through 2/9, various times and locations, 773-661-6361, forthepeoplecollective.org. F
