Rodney Ewing
As a topic-based artist, my multidisciplinary practice involves extensive research of overlooked historical objects, individuals, spaces and events of the Black Diaspora. The narratives that I explore translate the actual and emotional dimensions of these subjects, to draw the viewer in toward the piece and immerse them in a reorienting experience of images, words and ideas. By layering visual elements, I create an experience that is unique and nuanced within the context of prints, sculptures, drawings, or installations."
“With my work I create platforms that require the viewer to be both present and profound in their observations.”
“Strange and Bitter Crops (2021) by Rodney Ewing
Rodney Ewing was asked by Sarah Eisner if he would make an artwork with the Early Hand-Drawn Map of South Carolina Plantations and Savannah Back River from her family's archive.
He spent a year thinking about the map before he began making the artwork. On the left side of the map, Ewing added a schematic plan of the Tayloe house on the Mount Airy plantation in Richmond County, Virginia. It shows the planter’s “big house” and the kitchen and working wings on either side used by the enslaved in service to their owners. The middle of the print shows a section of a comparative anatomy chart from 1799, created to support the theory of polygenesis and white supremacy. To the right is an excerpt from the poem “Under Siege” by the Palestinian writer, Mahmoud Darwish. Each layer of Strange and Bitter Crops speaks of inequality and oppression. Ewing took the title of the artwork from the final lyric of the song “Strange Fruit”—an anthem of protest against the American tradition of lynching made famous by blues singer Billie Holiday. Strange and Bitter Crops is the only artwork in the exhibition made with the original ephemeral document.
Rodney Ewing