Karon Davis Bobby Seale and The People’s Free Food Program 2020–21
© Karon Davis. Courtesy the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York. Photo: Cooper Dodds and Genevieve Hanson
Karon Davis uses plaster sculptures cast from real life to create striking vignettes that touch on African American history and experience. With her late husband, Noah Davis, Davis founded the much-lauded Underground Museum in Los Angeles. Located in a storefront space on West Washington Boulevard in the predominantly working-class neighborhood of Arlington Heights, the Underground Museum combines groundbreaking exhibitions with a robust roster of audience-centric programs.
In Bobby Seale and The People’s Free Food Program, a body cast of Bobby Seale, who founded the Black Panther Party along with Huey P. Newton, stands surrounded by grocery bags. The work references the Black Panthers’ program that provided hot meals to inner-city youth in Oakland, California, and other cities. Inspired by research about nutritional deficiencies among African American children, the Black Panthers believed that the alleviation of hunger and poverty to be an essential component of Black liberation. As an ensemble, the work’s objects serve as a powerful testament to the politicization of racial histories and the often misunderstood or misrepresented movement for Black emancipation.
Identification
Title
Bobby Seale and The People’s Free Food Program
Production Date
2020–21
Object Number
2021.063a-n
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, museum purchase with funds provided by PAMM’s Collectors Council, Jorge M. and Darlene Pérez, Karen H. Bechtel and William M. Osborne, Donna and Eric G. Johnson, Diane and Robert Moss, Nedra and Mark Oren, Dorothy and Aaron Podhurst, Craig Robins, Matthew Gorson, Frank Destra and Alex Flucker
Copyright
© Karon Davis. Courtesy the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York. Photo: Cooper Dodds and Genevieve Hanson
https://www.pamm.org/en/artwork/2021.063a-n
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Physical Qualities
Medium
Plaster bandages, plaster, chicken wire, glass eyes, steel, acrylic resin, and gold paint
Dimensions
Dimensions variable
Visual Description
Bobby Seale and The People’s Free Food Program, by Karon Davis, is an installation, featuring a life-sized plaster sculpture of a man, surrounded by thirteen life sized grocery filled plaster bags that sit on the floor.The image of ‘Bobby Seale and The People’s Free Food Program’ is arranged in landscape format, meaning that its longest side runs parallel to the floor. In the horizontal center of the image stands a white figurative plaster statue of a man wearing a full trench coat, pants, and dress shoes. The man stands in a three-quarter posed, with his right arm facing the viewer, and his left arm is facing the back wall. His left hand is held behind his back. He has a round Afro styled haircut. His mustache is fashioned in a way where the edges at the corner of his mouth move all the way to the bottom of his jaw. The top of this tie moves downward under his wide collared trench coat. The flaps on his shoulders run parallel to his collar bone. Beneath the collars of his trench coat run three buttons that run parallel to his leg. His left leg juts forward slightly, as the right leg stands upright. His pants are wide at the ankle above his boots.Three plaster bags, filled with gold tied plastic bags, surround him; one to his left, and two to the right of him. Around these three bags are a circle of ten similar bags, with diagonal lines etched into the plaster.
