CCS BARD

White people are        sets a framework to examine how whiteness has operated in the practice and biographies of a selection of artists from the Marieluise Hessel Collection: Tina Barney, John Baldessari, Vanessa Beecroft, Robert Longo, Pope L. and Bruce Nauman, and how this identity has been implicated, or not, in racial dialogues of their work. Focusing on pieces created between 1970 and 2000, the exhibition contextualizes these works within a complex socio-political history of race and class struggle in the United States that has been shaped by implicit biases, segregation, and structural and systemic inequality.

Asking viewers to consider the implications of white identity, White people are        is a multimedia exhibition that outlines “white” as a socially constructed racial category with no biological foundation, and “whiteness” as a set of privileges granted to “white” skinned individuals, a powerful structure with tangible, violent effects. White people are         seeks not to fill the blank, but instead underline the unmarked quality of white identity by examining the values, and social practices that normalize and reproduce the hegemony of a white-dominated society at the exclusion and disadvantage of non-white people.

In order to encourage further reflection, White people are        includes a bibliography and reading shelf that contextualize the approaches of the exhibition within critical race studies. All of the selected materials are available in the CCS Library and Stevenson Library catalogues.