'Black Lives & White Fragility': Artists reckon with race in 'powerful' Cohasset exhibit

COHASSET – White privilege and the fight against systemic racism are the focus of a new art exhibit at the South Shore Art Center.

Titled "Black Lives & White Fragility," the exhibit aims "to initiate an authentic dialogue" about racism and social injustice.

"It's a powerful show," said Patrice Maye, South Shore Art Center's director.

Every other year, the gallery hosts a black-and-white show, Maye said, a common theme in the art world. After 2020, she said she felt the theme should go deeper.

The show features about 50 works – including paintings, photography and sculpture – that are mostly black and white, but all touch on some aspect of race, such as interracial relationships and the conversations sparked throughout the country after George Floyd's death last year while he was detained by police in Minnesota.

Maye selected Boston muralist Rob “ProBlak” Gibbs to be the show's juror. Gibbs began his career spray-painting walls in Roxbury, where he grew up. Now he's an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Fine Arts and cofounder of the nonprofit organization Artists for Humanity, which helps employ young artists who may not have the resources or support they need.

Maye, who worked with Gibbs at Artists for Humanity, called him the "heart and soul" of the organization.

He selected the pieces to be displayed and spent time considering how the pieces would work together in the gallery.

"I'm still digesting the art," Gibbs said when the exhibit opened on Nov. 12. "I hope they speak well to each other in the space."

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Gibbs emphasized the importance of conversation in the exhibit space, not just between people viewing the art but also between the pieces themselves.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, Gibbs wondered, how many conversations are the paintings and photos having with each other?

In one, "Arrest Me for Sitting on the Bus?" by New York artist Donald Cooper, a crow is standing over a small bus. The crow's ribcage consists of heavy ropes tangled around the bird's body.

Maye called the piece "evocative," pointing out its literal reference to Jim Crow laws and bus protests during the civil rights movement.

Another work on display is even more straightforward: a list of names printed across a canvas titled "Shot While Being Black."

Gibbs said he didn't have artists' names or descriptions of their intent when he selected the artworks.

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"I liked everything that I saw," he said. The decision-making process was difficult, he said, because he couldn't put every submitted piece in the exhibit.

He said he wanted to explore duality in the selected pieces because the notion of contrast is prevalent in the gallery. For example, opposite colors are displayed together for visual effect. Many pieces show Black people next to their white counterparts. In one set of photographs, two young girls – one white, one Black – hold hands as they walk down the sidewalk.

In another painting, a Black woman stares into the viewer's eyes, but her portrait is interrupted by stripes of white painted over her face and body.

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"It's not about having the answer or the antidote," Gibbs said. "If it made you uncomfortable ... Sometimes you have to have these conversations to get to the bottom of things."

Maye said the exhibit is important in a town that has little diversity. Cohasset is 96 percent white, the latest census data shows.

She said a rally she attended in Cohasset after the death of George Floyd last year was well-attended and well-received.

But a Black Lives Matter sign she placed at the South Shore Art Center was defaced and then stolen, and two Black Lives Matter signs she placed outside her Scituate home were stolen.

"I realized there was still a lot of work to be done," Maye said. "It's really important that we let people know that we're a safe space for everybody."

If you go

What: "Black Lives & White Fragility"

Where: South Shore Art Center, 119 Ripley Road, Cohasset

When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Saturday, through Dec. 18

Information: 781-383-2787; ssac.org

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Reach Alex Weliever at aweliever@patriotledger.com.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: 'Black Lives & White Fragility' exhibit on display at Cohasset gallery