American Artist

I Am Blue, 1

From suicides, to gang violence, to the epidemic abuse of force by police departments (predominantly against Black men), to school and mass shootings, there is perhaps no more urgent issue in the United States than gun control.

The color blue is a proxy for both sadness, and a color that is emblematic of American law enforcement services. I Am Blue, 1 by American Artist is a sculpture that fuses a school desk with a ballistic shield. It is part of a larger suite of works including a video seminar in which a blue-colored avatar ?speaks of police violence, as well as a set of books on police psychology. Collectively, these items can be assembled to make a seminar-like room, wherein the attendees are seated in traditional school desks modified so that the table tops are outfitted as bullet proof shields. Allusions to school shootings in this work blur with the unending spate of police shootings to form a meta-narrative on the interlinked systems of violence which have run amok due to American gun culture. 

In addition to this, the fact that the work implicates cops as “shielded”, promotes the twinned idea that they are spared from this violence, and thus have impunity for their actions. As a necessary counterpoint, the work could also be read as a need for the police to empathize with victims, i.e., students, but that police also need to be educated on necessary de-escalation practices. While this work advocates for police, gun, and race relation reform, it could also be said that American Artist’s legal name change – as a camouflage, or form of “passing” – doubles the effects of the work’s engagement with shield and cover imagery.