Christina M. Marsh » Profile

Location

Region

United States of America

City

Baltimore MD

Profile

Personal Statement

Black is the crack in the sidewalk. White is the unbroken path.

As a teenager, I would sit at the bus station in Memphis, Tennessee with no destination. I liked watching people move by like apparitions. For me this trip away from the suburbs was an equivalent to traveling to a foreign country. These people that floated by seemed ripped from short stories by Flannery O’Connor. Their eyes and expressions told stories- or at least that is what I imagined. I felt that in being in physical proximity to these people, I could know their past and fabricate their future. Never once did I break silent character, I just watched.


Black is soot. White is snow.

Growing up, I never lived in a neighborhood where children played outside-instead we took lessons. As a child my schedule consisted of swim lessons, gymnastics, piano, ballet, voice lessons, acting classes and the list goes on. I quit swimming because I disliked the smell of the chlorine. In gymnastics, I only wanted to do back flips. I liked the glossy finish on the piano and running my fingers across the keys, but my instructor was more ambitious than I was. In ballet during performances, the other girls wore pink lipstick.


Black is disruption. White is constant.

House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros, remembers her childhood and sitting in her sister’s kitchen marveling at its ‘perfection’. She describes the paint on the walls being like the frosting on a wedding cake- white and smooth. Except for a small crack in the corner of the room. That one crack in that ‘perfect’ room, life and household is what symbolizes that something is wrong. I have lived most of my life feeling that I am that crack. My experiences of being black, raised in upper-middle class suburbia were surrounded by white. I become the reminder that all is not homogenous. The only way I can describe how some people react to my presence is to say it is similar to the discomfort that is usually reserved for someone with a visible handicap entering a room. Everyone tries to not stare, but they do make eye contact. The room shifts because you might need extra space and you can feel eyes watching.


Black is the Break. White is the mend.

I use art as a medium to illustrate my struggle with physical and emotional bonds. Between the polarities of black and white, positive and negative exist a neutral area. My works are about deciphering that gray. The struggle for identity through the imaging of black is a prevalent conversation in the art world and beyond, as well as is the use of white, not just as a color, but also a symbol. My experience is that nothing is purely black or white; everything exists as interpretation and perspective.

My work entitled ‘One Drop’, 2004 uses 100 glasses filled with 8 ounces of milk and varying amounts and types of chocolate to illustrate Americas perceptions of how ethnicity is defined through our consciousness of color. In looking at James Davis’s, Who is Black: One Nations Definition, I became interested in how in western law literally a drop of ‘black’ blood designates you as being black. Although using food as medium, I take it out of the realm of edible and insinuate ‘specimen’ by placing each on the floor. Every glass sits inside a painted white square and is labeled alphabetically with a racial slur or pun associated with blackness (i.e. defendant, lawn jockey, antique farm equipment, etc.). Each mixture is equated as black because of the label placed on it and its dilution ratio, regardless of color.

Pulling from the aesthetic and history of Rorschach prints, I pursued a series called ‘Splotches’ (2005). My method of creating this series was to literally take ink and render half an object that I associated with blackness. I then took this half of a drawing and folded it making the initial side touch the other to create a whole. The process of taking a half and creating a whole that is distorted in translation becomes a way to illustrate my own rendering of black stereotype.

Meditation on the Museum Walls (2004) documents the white used at several museums in the United States through a series of color photographs. The concept of the ‘standard’ white at each institution represents ideal neutrality in the space. I started researching the color as well as the brands and whether their white is cool or warm. The final construction of whites paired with the brand and Museum name creates a hierarchy of spaces. Photographs are used as traditional evidence as well as the cold white contrast of the photographic paper heightens the neutral white of the gallery walls.

White Foods (Installation II, 2004) is based on recipes of different origins I have edited together that are comprised of all (bleached flour, refined sugar, milk etc.). The full installation displays the book in close proximity to shelves that have the ingredients separated and measured with a page number referencing where it can be found in the book. My criteria for ‘white foods’ demanded having a white interior as well as white exterior. An example would be Marshmallow Cream, but bananas would not qualify because of their yellow skin. I am intrigued by the concept of what we consume physically becoming a basis to how we identify ourselves.


Black is the question. White is the answer.

To say that I understand all of the facets of what I do would be a lie. Even to say that I seek the ability to completely dissect is false. My work is an extension of my desire to understand and connect not with an audience, but with me. I have found that the place where I survive best is the place that I have constructed in the studio.

In the end I start just as I am or as I began. Sitting, wanting to meld in, so that I can start to observe how things unravel when I am no longer noticed.

History

Member for

4 years 7 weeks