4TH WORLD

thenight.gallery/2020_Roland-Knowlden

Opening Screening
September 11, 2020 — 7:30 p.m.
Location: The Silver Room (Hyde Park) - 1506 E 53rd St, Chicago, IL 60615

On Exhibit: September 12-October 9
Location: The Night Gallery

Historically, skin color has been used as a tool of abstraction/extraction against people of color. Their complexity, experience, and humanity has been reduced down to generalizations that pertain to the color of their skin. Today, African Americans experience the American geography through negotiating these abstractions of skin color; simplifications to Black and White.

4TH WORLD is an exploration of color, experience and geography. The film questions the relationship between African, American, and African American through the lens of color. Experience as it relates to skin color (Black, White). Nationality represented through the colors of the flag (Red, White, Blue). Melanin represented through geography's relationship to the sun (Thermal Hues, UV Index).

The geography of our ancestors and the thermal properties of those regions, shaped the melanin content of our skin. Thus,the thermal relationship to skin color is one that can link African American people to their geographical origins of Africa. Color here is used not as reduction, but as a means to highlight the tension and complexity of our African and American geographical origins. The operative mapping of these thermal geographies aim to render the implications of color visible. While skin color, experience, and geography are linked visibly through their thermal hues, 4TH WORLD manipulates the color and implications of these images. The viewer is invited to interpret new relationships between skin color, experience, and the geographies of Africa and America.