Michael Brown Sr. Calls Exhibit Featuring Replica Of His Son’s Corpse Disgusting
They say art is supposed to elicit some type of emotion. And sometimes those emotions won’t be pleasant.
Perhaps that was the rationale artist Ti-Rock-Moore utilized as she crafted her latest, controversial exhibit, Confronting Truths: Wake Up. Housed in Chicago’s Gallery Guichard, the piece recreates the scene of Mike Brown’s lifeless body, lying face down in the middle of that street in Ferguson, Missouri.
Most of us remember what Brown’s body looked like in the street. Images and video of it were shared all over social media and the news, as it took police hours to cover Brown’s corpse. Many of us not only remember the images, we remember the hurt, outrage, anger, frustration and grief that image produced within us.
Many of us didn’t want to relive it again. But we did with Eric Garner and then again Walter Scott and the other innocent Black men and women killed at the hands of police who didn’t receive excessive media coverage. Sadly, living in this country, it wouldn’t be surprising if we were confronted with an image like it again.
But perhaps Ti-Rock Moore wasn’t thinking about us when she created her exhibit for the Chicago. Perhaps she was thinking about the people who didn’t feel those emotions. And maybe she wanted to produce that response within them.
Moore, a White woman from New Orleans whose work often centers around race, says this piece represents White privilege in America and how it negatively affects the Black community.
The exhibit also features a Black statue of liberty, a noose hanging from a neon sign, and the words “I Can’t Breathe,” over a sculpture of the crucifix.
While Moore’s aims and her message are both needed and noble, not all members of the Brown family see it this way.
While some applaud the exhibit, Mike Brown’s father, Michael Brown Sr. is anything but pleased.
In an interview with Fox 2, Brown senior said, “I really, really, really would like for them to take that away. I think it’s really disturbing, disgusting. I keep the thought, that thought, that picture is still in my head.”
Brown Sr. also said no one contacted him before the exhibit went on display.
“The feelings that I kind of tried to ball up and put the side a little bit–which I have good days and bad days, still anyway–, that just brought the whole day back alive.”
He says that he has no problem with the artist who created the images but he believes Moore, (though he didn’t mention her by name), should have reached out to both his side of the family as well as Mike Brown’s mother’s side of the family.
I can understand Moore’s intent. And I admire her for it. Still, there’s something almost cruel about making Brown’s family relive this moment again.
Maybe it’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that in her attempt to confront White privilege she highlighted another element of it. Moore, even in recreating this scene, still gets to be removed from it. This was an art project, a way to promote a message. And for Michael Brown’s family, this tragic event was their life.
What do you think about the exhibit? Do you respect Moore’s message and believe it should stand? Or was is the piece disrespectful, no matter her initial intent? Should the exhibit be closed, should the life size replica of Mike Brown’s corpse be removed?
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