{"id":6313,"date":"2018-03-06T07:19:52","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T12:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=6313"},"modified":"2018-03-09T02:04:56","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T07:04:56","slug":"james-montford-ari","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/03\/06\/james-montford-ari\/","title":{"rendered":"James Montford\u2019s \u2018Post-Traumatic Slavery Disorder\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI have post-traumatic slavery disorder. And I suffer from that everyday,\u201d James Montford (Ari) tells a couple students visiting his exhibition \u201cThis Is Not My Color\u201d<\/a> a couple weeks back. It\u2019s on view at Salem State University\u2019s Winfisky Gallery through March 7. \u201cPart of that is performance, but it\u2019s true. \u2026 It\u2019s meant to be sort of comical, tongue-in-cheek, but these are issues I\u2019ve been struggling with for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The small exhibition is a glimpse into the career of the Boston artist. His art often provocatively addresses America\u2019s legacy of racist violence as well as continued oppression in the culture today that he sees as a person identifying as African-American, Native American and European-American.<\/p>\n

The exhibit presents laptop computers that he\u2019s altered during a residency at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York, last year. You might not notice it at first, but the keyboards spell out \u201cgenocide\u201d or \u201cholocaust nigger.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe red one\u2014the red which is symbolic of blood\u2014is symbolic of native genocide,\u201d Montford says. \u201cRed skin, red blood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ari<\/a>
Ari “Native Genocide,” 2017. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some of the laptop screens show \u201cHolocaust Blankets with Smallpox,\u201d an installation including a pile of folded blankets meant to evoke the massacre of Native Americans by European colonists, which he plans to exhibit in an upcoming show at Rhode Island School of Design. One screen shows a photo of a performance in which he had himself \u201clynched\u201d by putting a hood over his head and binding himself up with a dozen nooses.<\/p>\n

The exhibit also includes maps on which he\u2019s replaced street names with racist epithets and self-portraits in which he appears as an astronaut floating in space. His most striking efforts (not exhibited here) have been solo protests against what he\u2019s seen as the racism still embedded in New England institutions\u2014including an occasion when he scrawled \u201cNo Coons Here!\u201d on the wall of a major gallery at the opening reception of an exhibit that he argued unfairly overlooked black artists.<\/p>\n

\"Advertisement\"<\/a>
Advertisement<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activism by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Ari<\/a>
Ari at Salem State University, Feb. 14, 2018 (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now in his mid 60s, Montford is in the process of changing his name to Ari. \u201cI just introduced myself to both of you with my slave name. Montford is my slave name,\u201d he tells the students. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing that for over 60 years, introducing myself with my slave name. Think what that does to you. \u2026 So that becomes a larger issue to me in life. I had ancestors that came here in slave ships. \u2026 I come from a time in this country when civil rights was still being fought for. But I still introduce myself by my slave name. I\u2019m not free.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ari has placed a Confederate battle flag on the floor right inside the gallery door like an (un)welcome mat. Many people walking in try to figure a way to not step on it and when that proves difficult, quickly and gingerly step across.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now I\u2019m standing on this flag. This flag represents horrific things,\u201d Ari tells the students. \u201cIt\u2019s not meant to be welcoming. It\u2019s meant to open up a dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

He proposes that the university hang the flags of nations from all over the world in a main dining hall. \u201cI\u2019m on this campaign to see about doing things like that. I\u2019ve heard about things that happened here before. But some of it [the change] has to come from students.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ari's<\/a>
Ari’s \u201cThis Is Not My Color\u201d exhibition at Salem State University. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2018Whites Only USA\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ari’s invitation to exhibit at Salem State University is part of the school’s ongoing response to a series of events that have brought racial tensions to the foreground at this college, which is this reported to have one the most diverse student populations in the Massachusetts\u2019 university system.<\/p>\n

A 2106 exhibit titled \u201cState of the Union\u201d that opened in the school\u2019s Winfisky Gallery on the day after Donald Trump won the presidency, attracted complaints for paintings by Lowell artist Garry Harley that depicted a gang of white-robed Ku Klux Klansmen and a World War II scene of Jewish people being rounded up by Nazis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Racist<\/a>
Racist graffiti sprayed on Salem State University’s baseball field in September 2017.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last May, the university\u2019s Twitter account was hacked and racist and pro-Trump tweets were sent out before the school regained control. Last September, \u201cDie Niggers,\u201d<\/a> \u201cTrump #1 Whites Only USA\u201d and \u201cWhites #1\u201d were spraypainted on benches and a wall at the school\u2019s baseball field.<\/p>\n

In response, the school canceled classes one day last October to hold an outdoor campus-wide forum<\/a> on the incidents. More than 100 students\u2014mostly students of color\u2014protested during the event, chanting, \u201cWe have no voice.\u201d The protesters then held their own forum days later.<\/p>\n

The school conducted a survey of students, faculty and staff released in early November that found that many students of color felt \u201cexcluded or intimidated.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

In January, graffiti reading \u201cwhite power”<\/a> and calling for killing police was found on the city’s bike path near the university.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is sort of my response to it. Now you can decide to come into the gallery,\u201d Ari says, still standing on that Confederate flag on the floor. \u201cIt\u2019s part of the power dynamics, the struggle that is going on in the country right now and we\u2019re experiencing that dynamic. This campus has recently had some racial tension. This is meant to respond to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ari's<\/a>
Ari’s statement at Salem State University’s gallery: “Why I Say Nigger.” (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A Product Of The Civil Rights Movement <\/strong><\/p>\n

Ari\u2019s father is African-American, his mother, who passed away a year ago, was a Massapequa Pequot. (The family believes Simeon Simons, a native guide to George Washington during the Revolution was an ancestor.) His dad spent his career in the Coast Guard, often away serving on ice breakers in the arctic or involved in maintaining sea supply lines for the United States\u2019 war in Vietnam. His mother was a stay at home mom.<\/p>\n

The postcard for Ari’s “This Is Not My Color\u201d exhibition shows a rainbow of Crayola crayons with a pinkish one in the middle labeled \u201cflesh.\u201d Though not the color of his flesh. (He recently exhibited the crayons in the exhibition \u201cLegacy of Cool: A Tribute to Berkley L. Hendricks\u201d<\/a> at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston.) Ari says, \u201cI grew up with the facts of playing with that Crayola 50 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ari was the oldest of four kids growing up in New London, Connecticut, and Honolulu, Hawaii. At his last high school track meet running hurdles in New Britain, he says he was recruited to attend Brandeis University in 1970 under the federally funded Upward Bound program aimed at increasing schools\u2019 diversity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a product of the civil rights movement,\u201d Ari told me in 2014. \u201cThe doors opened a little bit in the late \u201860s and \u201870s and I was one of the people they let through.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no college plans. I had no plans to do anything at all,\u201d Ari said.<\/p>\n

At Brandeis, he found his way into abstract painting and urban planning. He became immersed in the art world when he spent some years in New York. He studied at Columbia University and the Maryland Institute of Art. He painted minimalist artworks in the vein of Agnes Martin and Brice Marden.<\/p>\n

\"Ari<\/a>
Ari “Holocaust Nigger” (detail), 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2018I Had Never Seen The Klan\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI had never seen the Klan,\u201d Ari told me in 2014. \u201cIt was always something I had heard about and read about, but their actual presence was overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was around 1983 when he and a his friend, the celebrated African-American painter Barkley Hendricks, posed as photographers to witness a Ku Klux Klan rally in Norwalk, Connecticut.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were about a dozen Klan members in their Klan regalia behind a police fence in a public park. There was a crowd of 300 to 400 people, all white,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went right up to the barriers and posed as photographers, we had a lot of cameras and lights and a lot of paraphernalia. They came right up to us with their blow horns and they said, \u2018These niggers are the problem.\u2019 We were the only black people there. It was a defining moment because I felt somebody could have just put a knife in my back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ari recalled, \u201cThere was a moment when I realized I put my life in severe jeopardy. These people would kill me if they could.\u201d<\/p>\n

After witnessing the Klan rally, he began making hangman\u2019s nooses and collecting mammy dolls and other commercial memorabilia featuring racist caricatures of black folks that he then lynched in videos.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took me about year to process it,\u201d Ari said in 2014. \u201cIt changed the direction of my work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunger Fast<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cMartin Luther King Day To Be Recognized: James Montford, Minority Advisor, Ends Six Day Fast,\u201d the headline in the Phillips Exeter Academy student newspaper read in December 1989.<\/p>\n

The New Hampshire school, which gave him a home and studio, was an oasis for him and his two sons after he divorced his wife. \u201cBut they didn\u2019t celebrate the [Martin Luther] King holiday,\u201d he told me in 2014. \u201cWhat does that mean?\u201d He tried to get the school to recognize the assassinated civil rights leader, but felt his efforts were going nowhere. \u201cSo I decided I was doing to do a performance piece. \u2026 I went on a hunger fast. \u2026 I\u2019d drink water, but I would not eat until they agreed to celebrate the King holiday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Word spread around the campus as he hung signs, \u201cDay 1,\u201d \u201cDay 2,\u201d \u201cDay 5\u201d in the window of his office in the library building. \u201cDay seven, I got this note from the principal\u2019s office. It said, \u2018James, stop your fast. We\u2019ll do whatever you want to do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He ended it with an open forum, attended by nearly 300 people, to answer questions. \u201cI decided on my own that I had to leave [the school soon after]. I realized that I was messenger and other people had to come after that. It was so intense to be there.\u201d (When the school held its 20th annual MLK Day in 2011, it invited him back he encouraged students to speak up to improve the world.)<\/p>\n

Ari has since worked at Wilbraham & Monson Academy, Rhode Island School of Design and, from 2005 until recently, as a teacher at Rhode Island College and director of its Bannister Gallery.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy work from then forward,\u201d Ari told me in 2014, \u201cwas about a willingness to take risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ari<\/a>
Ari “After columbus,” 1996, mixed media on canvas. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mapping<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ari says he had been making small paintings of abstract patterns inspired by Native American baskets. But he shifted to making collages (some are on view at Salem State) of street maps of Hartford, Washington, D.C., and other major cities in which he replaced the real street names with \u201cDarkie Drive\u201d and other racist slurs.<\/p>\n

He exhibited one of his altered maps at Hartford\u2019s Old State House in 1991. \u201cI did one that was all about Hartford. I changed all the names to Jigaboo Lane and Nigger Way,\u201d Ari says. \u201cThe financial district and the area downtown that\u2019s the cultural district, I just flipped it. Instead of being Main Street, I named it Nigger Way.\u201d<\/p>\n

African-American guards at the Old State House were offended and got the building\u2019s director to remove the artwork. The institution later gave Ari a one-person show\u2014including one of his map pieces\u2014after the Will K. Wilkins, then and still now executive director of Real Art Ways, helped mediate the dispute.<\/p>\n

\"Ari<\/a>
Ari performing as a living lawn jockey in the early 2000s. (Courtesy of the artist)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ari continued to provocatively explore racism in photos of lawn jockeys and a sound-piece that bombarded listeners with racist slurs. In 1992, he began doing a series of lynching performances. \u201cI had all these nooses that I\u2019d been making for years and I put them all on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

A haunting photo in his archive shows him under a black hood, bound by numerous nooses to a column outside Niagara University\u2019s Castelliani Art Museum in the early 2000s. He uses a photo of a similar performance on one of his altered laptops.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call it \u2018Will He Pee His Pants?\u2019\u201d Ari says of these lynching performances. They\u2019re endurance acts, each lasting around two hours. \u201cI have done it where I peed my pants.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ari's<\/a>
Ari’s lynching performance at Niagara University\u2019s Castelliani Art Museum in the early 2000s. (Courtesy of the artist)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2018No Coons Here!\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

In February 1995, Ari caused a scandal at an opening reception attended by hundreds of people for an exhibition called \u201cRAW Space,\u201d which featured work by Sol LeWitt and 21 other Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts artists at Hartford\u2019s prominent alternative arts center Real Art Ways. Upset by the lack of black artists in the show, he borrowed a friend\u2019s lipstick and scrawled \u201cNo Coons Here!”<\/a> right on the wall.<\/p>\n

Ari says he had gone to a Hartford event earlier that day at which the African-American artist Benny Andrews was presented with the key to the city. \u201cAnd then I went over to this gallery,\u201d he recalls. \u201cHis key wouldn\u2019t open that door.\u201d<\/p>\n

The gallery opted to keep Ari\u2019s graffiti on the wall during the exhibition while also defending its record of exhibiting artists of color\u2014including art by Ari the previous spring\u2014and noting that two of the artists in the exhibit Ari protested were Asian-American. “I think James Montford wanted to be in the show. Now he’s in the show, and I hope he’s happy,” Real Art Ways Executive Director Will K. Wilkins told the Hartford Courtant at the time.<\/p>\n

Ari remains proud of his protest: \u201cThat was one of the greatest moments of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ari<\/a>
Ari “Black Indian Pow Wow,” 2016, mixed media on panel. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Future of Racism<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the early 2000s, at the time of his Niagara University lynching performance, Ari dressed as a living cigar store Indian wearing a child\u2019s toy feather headdress at Buffalo City Hall. He says police arrived to arrest him for another performance in which he stood outside the government building as a living lawn jockey with a flaming torch.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight as they were about to do that, the news crew showed up,\u201d Ari recalled. The TV anchorman \u201csteps up and starts talking with me. \u2026 Then it switches to this art thing. This guy basically saves my life and then does this really nice [TV] representation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past few years, Ari has been making collaged self-portraits in which he appears as an astronaut floating in space\u2014sometimes amidst racist caricatures of African-Americans and Native Americans. The gestures of the figures are meant to evoke the \u201chands up, don\u2019t shoot\u201d pose often performed in Black Lives Matter protests since a white police officer shot an unarmed black teen by the name of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to go to space,\u201d Ari says. But he wonders if the racism prevalent here on earth will continue off the planet.<\/p>\n

\"Ari<\/a>
Ari “Hands Up Don’t Shoot,” 2017, mixed media on panel. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe are here on this planet and I\u2019m trying to toy with the notion and anticipate the notion that we\u2019ll all be in space,\u201d Ari says. \u201cAm I going to get there? Is this skin color going to get there? If so, what\u2019s going to be the process? \u2026 In space will it be hands up, don\u2019t shoot? Because that\u2019s the process I\u2019ve experienced here. Do we leave it here or do we take it there?\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2014, he told me, \u201cVery little has changed in the last 60 or 70 years. White culture has managed to create the appearance of equity. But it\u2019s just the appearance. The power structures haven\u2019t been affected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ari<\/a>
Ari shows his testosterone patches at Salem State University. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another inspiration for the exhibition title \u201cThis Is Not My Color\u201d is testosterone supplement patches that his doctor recently prescribed him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a black man, I\u2019ve got all the virility I\u2019ll ever need,\u201d Ari jokes about the idea of needing testosterone to a gallery visitor. \u201cI\u2019ve got twice as much as you\u2019d have, I\u2019ve got three times as much as you\u2019d have. This is testosterone.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he picked the patches up at the pharmacy, he discovered they were tinted a Caucasian \u201cflesh\u201d color.<\/p>\n

\u201cCalling this color as flesh, this is telling me that I don\u2019t have health insurance,\u201d Ari says. \u201cI\u2019m not important enough to have health insurance. There is no clear form, or a variety pack. The kicker is it was given to me by my Indian doctor, from India, who\u2019s darker than me. What has he bought into? It\u2019s very layered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHere I am 50 years later, this is what I played with\u201d\u2014he says of the \u201cflesh\u201d crayon\u2014\u201cand this is what I have to wear,\u201d Ari says. \u201cIt\u2019s heavy shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activism by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI have post-traumatic slavery disorder. And I suffer from that everyday,\u201d James Montford (Ari) tells a couple students visiting his exhibition \u201cThis Is Not My Color\u201d a couple weeks back. It\u2019s on view at Salem State University\u2019s Winfisky Gallery through March 7. \u201cPart of that is performance, but it\u2019s true. \u2026 It\u2019s meant to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6214,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6313"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6313"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6420,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6313\/revisions\/6420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}