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The Word
Ink, house paint, wax on linen on wood panel, suspended on a linen wrapped wood panel with cotton ribbon and wood picture hanging moulding
36 x 24 x 5 inches
2021
This work strips down an accusation to its most elementary form: a single letter rendered as pure abstraction in black and white.
The title references the contemporary practice of saying "the N word" rather than speaking the slur itself. The artwork carries that reduction one step further. The accusation is stripped not only of the word, but of language itself, leaving only the positive and negative space of a single letter. What remains is no longer a word but a structure that suspends meaning while existing simultaneously as language, evidence, and contemporary abstraction.
Like Narcissus, the work presents the image as something held up for examination rather than acceptance. The suspended form suggests evidence placed before the viewer. The accusation no longer belongs to me. It is carried by the artwork.
The N Word extends an investigation that runs throughout this body of work. In Gibberish, language loses its legibility. Here, the accusation loses language itself. Both works invite viewers to examine not simply words, but the systems that give language its authority and power. They ask how language can be manipulated to redirect attention, shape public perception, and obscure lived experience.
By reducing the accusation to abstraction, the work removes its sensationalism while exposing its function. The letter remains. Its authority does not.