| Renee Billingslea |
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 Lynch Mob Hats
Traditional hats molded from pages of old books. The laid text coated with varnish gives each hat an identity pertaining to the roles of men, women and children, among the lynching crowd, and, subsequently, a reference to what they possibly "witnessed, heard, smelled, observed." Using an antiquated photographic process called Van Dyke, Billingslea takes digital negatives of appropriated images from old lynching postcards and transfers the image onto homemade muslin ties. The hats reveal how the wearer participated, "I tied his hands"," I took off his clothes" "Mommy took me out of school to watch", Daddy held me on his shoulders". The hats give a misleading feeling of respectability when the scene itself is one of brutality and prejudice.
Each hat. . $800 comes with the armature for installation. |
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Renee Billingslea
Renee Billingslea received an MFA in Photography in 2003 from San Jose State University after earning a BFA in Photography from Southern Oregon University, and serving two years in the Peace Corps, in the country of Kiribati.
In addition to teaching, Renee is an exhibiting artist who combines her talents in photography with textile and mixed media creating environments that address historical, racial and social issues. Her installation "Lynching in America" has toured throughout several Academic Institutes.
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