America’s Well-Armed Militias at SPACES @ Hyperallergic
CLEVELAND, Ohio—There is a specific subset of US identity that holds the Second Amendment especially dear. Our country’s militaristic roots have formed a kind of echo chamber, and these days the prominence and pitch of gun violence in everyday US society has increased to terrifying levels over the past half-century, manifesting in more-than daily mass shootings in 2019, including numerous school shootings, and increasingly, armed border militias spurred by propagandist right-wing media outlets to undertake vigilante-style human rights violations. A show of new works at SPACES asked six artists to research and interpret some key concepts connected with gun violence; America’s Well-Armed Militias features the work and related research of Matthew Deibel (“Stand-your-ground laws”), Michelle Graves (“firearms in schools”), Danté Rodriguez (“U.S./Mexico border militias”), Darius Steward (“Black Panthers”), Jared Thorne (“gangs”), and Nikki Woods (“westward expansion”).
“[We] began our brainstorming and research around this exhibition shortly after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School,” said SPACES Executive + Artistic Director Christina Vassallo, in an interview with Hyperallergic. “I felt that, given our location in a state with rather relaxed gun control laws, it was our imperative to investigate why specific groups of Americans chose to arm themselves, and how they have been treated differently by the law, the media, and other Americans.”
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