Artist withdraws controversial painting
Opening day is a week away and the 2017 Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival has already had its first controversy. Thank social media for that.
Artist Tom Megalis’ painting “Within 2 Seconds, the Shooting of Tamir Rice” was among 54 works accepted into this year’s Juried Visual Art Exhibition. Tamir Rice was a 12-year-old boy shot to death by Cleveland police in 2014.
As he prepared to deliver the work, Mr. Megalis posted an image of the painting on Facebook, prompting intense reactions on social media from people who felt the artist, who is white, was exploiting black pain.
Mr. Megalis, a Carnegie Mellon University graduate who lives in Cleveland, said he was shocked by the response.
“That’s the last thing I wanted
to do. That’s when I decided to pull the painting” from the exhibition, he said in a phone interview Thursday.
The arts festival’s website describes many of the artworks in the juried show as dealing with “issues of race, gender, immigration and other social concerns,” reflecting a move toward inclusivity and dialogue that the festival has pursued in recent years.
Festival director Sarah Aziz said the festival, which is run by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, did not give Mr. Megalis advice on whether or not to withdraw the painting. Artists sign a contract when accepted to show, but they weren't going to hold him to it.
“If he wanted to take the risk, he had been juried in and it was OK to stay. But he was free to do whatever he was comfortable with,” she said.
To address the “multi-faceted nature of this circumstance,” the festival is sponsoring a discussion of race, representation and art at the Trust Arts Education Center, 805-807 Liberty Ave., Downtown, at 6 p.m. June 7. Kilolo Luckett, a Pittsburgh art historian and cultural producer, will moderate. The event is free but space is limited and registration is suggested at https://traf.trustarts.org/ events/1633.
The social media critics are accusing the artist of what is known as cultural appropriation.The charge is that unless a person is born and raised within a culture, he or she cannot borrow from that culture with integrity. The charge has been applied to many areas including visual arts but also food, fashion and music.
Ms. Aziz said: “Art should make you feel something. We want people to have reactions and conversations with people who are different than themselves.
“It’s not the way we’d planned for but I’m hoping this forum will attract people who wouldn’t usually be in a room together to talk about art and the importance of it and the importance of respect and culture.”
Mr. Megalis said the painting represents his reaction to how the case was handled.
“My initial reaction to this was, when the two white officers were found not guilty, when they didn't indict them, it was outrage. I had outrage against the white officers, the prosecutor.”
The painting was his attempt to “document this event, to shame the police officers. It’s very graphic in a symbolic fashion. The white officers are depicted as skeletal, almost robotic. An officer is restraining his sister. Writing on the painting says things like ‘not indicted.’ I constructed the scene. It’s my interpretation. It’s not from a picture.
“It’s an image I felt needed to be shown again and again to show what happened. A bad situation. A tragic situation.
“In some ways it’s a tribute to Tamir Rice. When I was painting it, I said, ‘This is for you, man.’ He loved to play basketball. He loved to draw, and he’ll never get to draw. Now you’re in a painting and you’ll be in a painting as long as this painting exists.
“It saddened me as an artist and a father. I’m not some idiot who wanted to make money off a dead black child.”
Mr. Megalis said the painting is not for sale. He’d offered it a year ago as a gift to Rebuild Foundation in Chicago and to other nonprofits that serve an AfricanAmerican constituency. He’d like to place it somewhere, gratis, where it can be “a trigger for some change. I put a lot of time in on it. It’s a big piece – 8-feet in length. If people get up inside it and look at it and read it, I believe people would get it.
“I know that I can't possibly understand the feeling of growing up black and or experience true black pain,” he said. “But I do empathize and have sympathy.”