“Being violent could cost me my body but so could not being violent enough.”

In his book “Between the World and Me”, Ta-Nehisi Coates mentions navigating this space between fear and survival. I pose the question of how we might move forward, conquer our fears and thrive, all while addressing historical and contemporary issues in our society and communities. Employing a hybrid of painting and drawing in collage, I focus on methods of memorializing and dealing with trauma and the spaces we use to activate these actions.

My most recent series are compound portraits of Black bodies. Combining images of contemptible collectible memorabilia, historical photographs, as well as black archetypes from literature and film, the work investigates fabrications and false conceptions, and honors the many men, women, and children who have lost their lives to racial discrimination.

In previous work, I use portraiture as a tool to immortalize the numerous unarmed victims who have passed, their names all too often forgotten. These works incorporate symbolic materials such as bleach and gunpowder to challenge common notions about the black body that are branded into the black psyche, and explore the power of cultural imprinting delivered by family, friends, the media and more violent, destructive means including policing and incarceration.

About the artist:

Anthony Young is a Boston based artist born and raised in Charleston, WV. Working primarily in painting, drawing, paper, and printmaking, he earned his M.F.A. from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/ Tufts University and his B.A. from West Virginia State University. In 2019, Anthony received the Juror’s Choice Award, National Prize Exhibition, granted by University Place Gallery and Kathryn Schultz Gallery in Cambridge, MA. He is also the winner of the 2018 Walter Feldman Fellowship for Emerging Artists, granted by the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston, Boston, MA.