Known But to God: The Dug Up, Dissected, and Disposed for the Sake of Medicine

2017 - Sculpture (Sculpture)

38.1 x 20.32 x 38.1 cm

Doreen Lynette Garner

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Known But to God: The Dug Up, Dissected, and Disposed for the Sake of Medicine by Doreen Lynnette Garner is a small, suspended sculpture composed of glass, silicone, steel, epoxy putty, pearls, Swarovski crystals, and whiskey. At once attractive and repulsive, the sculpture combines objects of adornment with what appears to be viscera. The sculpture’s curious delicacy evokes a ritualistic catharsis, in response to persistent forms of medical racial violence and objectification for Black people in America and around the world. The hanging glass sculpture references showglobes—early 20th century symbolic markers for pharmacies and apothecaries, typically hung in the window and filled with colored liquid. Their opulent exteriors belie abject contents: silicone body fragments floating in whiskey, alluding to the appalling history of medical violence inflicted upon black bodies.

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Doreen Lynette Garner’s practice examines the histories and enduring effects of racial violence in the United States. She does this through the frameworks of medicine and pathology, by examining past and present examples of experimentation, malpractice, and exploitation enacted upon Black people. Harkening back to artists such as Lorraine O’Grady and Howardena Pindell, Doreen Lynette Garner’s work interrogates the abuse of power, the politics of redress and retribution, and ancestral revenge. Garner leverages her artistic practice as a vehicle to commemorate Black people who were enslaved, medically tortured, and racially oppressed.

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Colors:

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• race.n.03
• racism.n.01
• oppression.n.01
• power.n.01
• heritage.n.01
• ritual.n.01