Suzanne Broughel

As material for this series, I use paper bags from stores endangered by NYC gentrification. For some time, I’ve been collecting these bags from my purchases at the bodegas, delis, and mom and pop stores being pushed out of the city.

I made this piece while looking at whiteness in relation to my French-Canadian ancestry, during my first trip to Canada for a residency.

“…to the centre, the absence of a racial identity can bolster claims of universality while concealing socio-economic exploitation.”

- Corrie Scott (2016) How French Canadians became White Folks, or doing things with race in Quebec

Another piece that I made while looking at whiteness in relation to my French-Canadian ancestry, during my first trip to Canada for a residency.

“Defining contemporary French Québécois identity in solely cultural and linguistic terms ironically conceals its current allegiances to whiteness. The challenge, then, is for both French and English Canada to confront whiteness head on.”

- Corrie Scott (2016) How French Canadians became White Folks,or doing things with race in Quebec

Another piece that I made while looking at whiteness in relation to my French-Canadian ancestry, during my first trip to Canada for a residency.

“Historical accounts of where, when and why certain groups of people are identified, or identify themselves, as ‘white’ have revealed whiteness to be an unstable, relational, privileged and performative phenomenon rather than a fixed, self-evident, corporal, biological category or characteristic.”

- Corrie Scott (2016) How French Canadians became White Folks, or doing things with race in Quebec

An installation made from white cotton fabric items. Some of the items are tie-dyed with self-tanning lotions and skin bronzers.

I was invited to participate in The Wayland Rudd Collection, a collaborative project organized by Yevgeniy Fiks that focused on the representation of Africans and African-Americans in Soviet visual culture.

Participants were asked to respond to Fiks’ collection of over 200 Soviet images (paintings, movie stills, posters, graphics, etc.) of Africans and African-Americans spanning from the 1920s to the 1980s. The archive is named after Wayland Rudd, an African-American actor who moved to Russia in the 1930’s, to escape the racism he faced in the U.S.

I had a strong response to the postage stamps in the collection, which I used as a point of departure for this mail art project. There were Russian stamps depicting Nelson Mandela, a raised Black Power fist, and several variations of idealized, racially diverse groups of children and adults. I turned those stamp images into stationery letterhead. My mail art correspondents were asked to respond – in words or visuals – to the story of Wayland Rudd and its aftermath, in relation to their own identity and our present moment. Correspondents included artists, antiracist organizers, scholars, and performers.

I hand made envelopes for correspondents to use to mail back their responses in. Each envelope is a fragment of a large photo of Wayland Rudd and his Russian wife, Paulina Marksiti. After the envelopes were mailed back to me (stamped with vintage U.S. postage stamps depicting Paul Robeson, one of Rudd’s friends), I reassembled the photo fragments. The gallery installation, at Winkleman Gallery, included this large image – sewn into clear vinyl – alongside a binder of participants’ mail art responses.

Mail Art Participants:

Yevgeniy Fiks, Megan Malone, Tracy Ann Essoglou, Dr. David J. Leonard, Ph.D., Rebecca Rubin Akan, Oshin Akan, Gretchen Adreon, Dr. Mark Naison, Ph.D., Dr. Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D., Uraline Hagar, Zac Henson, Vaugh Spann, Elizabeth Sturges-Llerena, Anna Berg, VanOs, Carrie Stetler, Nicky Enright, Noelle Lorraine Williams, Tobacco Brown, Dulcie Canton, Elizabeth Morgan, Miles Partington, Jerry Gant, Carl Hazlewood, Mary-Jackelyn Downing, Heng-Gil Han, Russell G. Jones, Jordan Margolis, Kimberly Becoat, Nikki Schiro, Erika Pettersen, Swati Khurana, Mona Kamal, Tattfoo Tan, Anthony Newton, Larry Yates, Edwin Gonzalez, Lawrence Graham-Brown, Coco Lopez , Shantrelle P. Lewis, Jodie Lyn Kee Chow, David Terry, Shani Peters, Elz Cuya Jones, Ray Llanos, Louis Chan, Jaret Vadera (plus two anonymous participants)

40 Acres of Bandaids (Every Shade of Bandaid for Sale Within 40 Acres of the African Burial Ground, NYC), is a conceptual sculpture that I made in 2002. I began by mapping a 40-acre area around New York City’s African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan. I then walked that area, buying every skin shade of bandaid that was for sale anywhere in the area (sources ranged from drugstores to 99 Cent stores to newsstands that sold bandaids). The result was 22 shades of light beige/pink skin tones, and one shade of a dark brown skin tone. I then made this flat wall sculpture, using those bandaids.

Buy Black is a site-specific installation I built at Aljira Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, NJ. I purchased all of the soap used in this installation from local Black-owned businesses. I began this project with conversations – online and in-person – with Newark residents about the history of the Buy Black movement, and suggestions about where to buy the soap. I used the soap to build this wall. The installation included business cards from the Black-owned businesses, which viewers could take. It also included a binder of my research and conversations, including a printout from the website of the antiracist organization C.U.R.E. (Caucasians United for Reparations and Emancipation) on the subject of supporting Black-owned businesses.

Conceal As You Heal (2002 - present) is an ongoing project that takes many forms. It is a public interaction with people, a photo project (displayed sometimes as large groups of photos, sometimes as individual photos), and a sculptural installation. It is an offshoot of my earlier project 40 Acres of Bandaids (Every Shade of Bandaid for Sale Within 40 Acres of the African Burial Ground, NYC).

While inventorying bandaids during my earlier project, I came across a discontinued brand of bandaids – Ebonaide - made for a range of Black and Brown skin tones, for sale at a 99 cent store. I decided to make further work using those bandaids. I ask passersby in public places to put on one of the brown bandaids. If they choose to participate, they decide where on their body to place the bandaid. I then photograph them wearing the bandaid.