Shield

Shield for Intercession Gallery's In.Case project is a meditation on masculinity and power in the medium of wax. This work grew from my residency at Cambridge Artworks, where I spent two weeks in October 2017 creating art on issues of family and home using my own family history as starting point. While devised as a break from my intensely political year-long work The Thing or The Oh Noeux Tapestry, the experience only served to highlight how the personal and political are inextricable. Both delicate and unyielding, the tiles are an impression of the substantial belt buckle once belonging to the artist’s grandfather, who was a Chicago Police Sergeant investigated in the 1970s as part of a ring of police shaking down motorists for payoffs. While eventually granted immunity from prosecution by the state, he was indicted, along with two fellow policemen, for perjury by a grand jury for lying about his involvement in the crime.