Kenny Cole
Monroe, ME
Much of my painting and installations take on an activist perspective in order to begin identifying and defining emerging moral calculi.
MessageCollection: "Relief for The Portland Sufferers"
A body of work created specifically for an exhibition celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Portland Public Library. Each artist was invited to find an object or work of art from the library's collection or archive to create new work from. I found a scathing, bitter letter from the south, expressing contempt and just deserts towards this northern city, against the destruction and loss of life endured within the writer’s home state of Alabama during the war, a letter of response to the devastating great fire that destroyed much of Portland, Maine on July 4, 1866. This letter was in stark contrast to the hundreds of letters written in support, many containing monetary donations, of relief for the "Portland Sufferers". All of the original letters have been cataloged and housed in the library's archive.
This guided me to explore contemporary hate speech and the problems of patriotism and ex-patriotism all reconfigured as old, worn, singed artifacts.
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