...
...
Server 3.0
Ro2 Gallery
Dallas, TX
DEC 12 - JAN 30, 2021
Server 3.0 serves as a space where identity, culture, and self-actualization can occupy a current sliver of time, all at once. Server exists as an origin story that encompasses a visual bibliography to my art practice. Server is a mixed media installation that incorporates: collage, photographs, audio, moving image, objects, and relics. When brought together, the installation becomes a life-sized view of this bibliography in the real, a space not hosted virtually but physically.
My inspiration for Server is the need to save and archive data that embodies Black culture. I have always been a hoarder; a miner for Black images. Over time and through my studies I realized that there were few people curating and cataloging these images and films in general. Most of the people who did just had it saved locally on their desktop or on a hosted site that was made for blogging or mass sharing of images. It was very important for me to take this data out and physically ‘like’ and share these images by plastering them all over in an installation. The process of gathering imagery starts from an assortment of archive data that I have been accumulating over the last decade. The images have been saved from Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram. With these images, I create various sized posters and prints as a sample of the data I have collected. The audio manifests itself from a youtube visual playlist that I have been compiling over the last few years. The video is also an integral part of the installation. The video mimics the rhythm of scrolling through one's feed, showing how this data exists in the interwebs.