Blues-Birds

April 9

- June 4, 2022

Inspired by Kerry James Marshall’s Black Birds series, Blues-Birds primarily celebrates music’s Black-innovators. The blue color celebrates the African-American musical art form of the blues - as it is foundational to most popular music today. It simultaneously suggests a tone of lament as Black artists have historically suffered cultural appropriation of their work and consequent erasure.

Curation
FLOOD

Works by
Steven Speciale and the Loyola High School Music Appreciation Students

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Inspired by Kerry James Marshall’s Black Birds series, Blues-Birds primarily celebrates music’s Black-innovators. The blue color celebrates the African-American musical art form of the blues – as it is foundational to most popular music today. It simultaneously suggests a tone of lament as Black artists have historically suffered cultural appropriation of their work and consequent erasure.

The sampling of John Audubon bird images serves as a metaphor for the modus operandi of structural racism. Audubon was a slave-owner and is rumored to be of mixed heritage. Regardless of the truth surrounding his ethnicity, the broader celebration of his painting masks his abhorrent past. The plushies address this issue more directly by celebrating a Black innovator on one side while acknowledging their appropriator on the other.

Blues-Birds is a soundpedro exhibit, curated by FLOOD. Learn more at soundpedro.org.

[List of works]