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Preview image of work. chalk on Asphalt paper,  The Jerome Project (Asphalt and Chalk) XI 29244

2015.11

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The Jerome Project (Asphalt and Chalk) XI

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Artist

Titus Kaphar (Kalamazoo, MI, 1976 - )

Title

The Jerome Project (Asphalt and Chalk) XI

Creation Date

2015

Century

21st century

Dimensions

48 1/4 x 36 13/16 in. (122.56 x 93.5 cm)

Object Type

drawing

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

chalk on Asphalt paper

Credit Line

Museum Purchase, Barbara Cooney Porter Fund

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

2015.11

This is an unconventional portrait of three young black men whose tragic deaths prompted a national conversation around racial profiling, policing, and lethal violence: Trayvon Martin (died February 26, 2012), Michael Brown (died August 9, 2014), and Tamir Rice (died November 22, 2014). Based on private photographs widely published in the aftermaths of their deaths, Kaphar’s drawing outlines their faces in white chalk on asphalt-coated roofing paper, thereby blurring the boundary between representational portrait conventions and common police documentation: the demarcation of victims on the crime scene with chalk outlines. The faces refuse to form a composite portrait, instead insisting upon the particular characteristics that defined each young man, and thus resisting the false—and dangerous—conflation of multiple individuals into a stereotype.

Keywords: man   Portrait   figures (representations)