Brown Bag Test August 02, 2016
Artist
Anders Bergstrom
(American, born 1971)
Date2016
Mediumsoftground etchings with aquatint, surface rolled on Akatosashi paper (recto and verso)
Dimensionseach bag: 8.9 × 5.1 × 3.2 cm (3 1/2 × 2 × 1 1/4 in.)
ClassificationsPrints
Credit LineChapin Riley Fund at the Greater Worcester Community Foundation
Object number2021.67
Description28 prints and 28 corresponding counterproofs for a total of 56 prints cut, folded & assembled by the artist; stored in custom clamshell box created by the artistLabel TextThe title of this work refers to the Jim Crow-era colorist practice of using a brown paper bag to determine whether a person could access certain social spaces such as fraternities, churches, nightclubs, and other “members only” establishments. Anyone darker than the bag was denied entrance. Bergstrom’s sculpture disrupts the test by presenting a spectrum of bags that does not privilege one color over another. Therefore, no one bag serves as the hue against which others should be judged. It has been noted that viewers often instinctually seek out their skin tone within the continuum. In this way, the sculpture reaffirms how ideas about race are foundational to notions of self and other.
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