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Published on November 02, 2021
No Spirit For Me, selection of 12 photo-lithographs, 2019, image courtesy of the artist.
“Last year, I acquired the contents of my father’s criminal case file from the Florida State Attorney who prosecuted him. The file included the official records used to condemn my father – court records, witness statements and police evidence photographs. Through these documents, I was able to track how the justice process failed in a case that the State hailed as an example of justice served. Using lithography, weaving and metalwork, I re-presented over 1000 pages of these records as “hanging files” in a fictitious police evidence room. The repetitive motions of printing 1000 pages through an etching press, of tracing the shapes of redaction on the loom, of welding dozens of steel joints was a method to use my body – the site of violence – as a vehicle for justice.” Rowan Renee.
No Spirit For Me was exhibited at MoMA PS1, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, curated by Nicole R. Fleetwood, Long Island City, NY, September 17, 2020 – April 5, 2021.
Rowan Renee explores how queer identity is mediated by the law, addressing the intergenerational impact of gender-based violence and incarceration through State records and family archives. Their work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Pioneer Works (2015) and the Aperture Foundation (2017), and they have received awards from the Aaron Siskind Foundation, the Harpo Foundation and the Jerome Hill Foundation.