Word: railroader
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...Constellation” is the piece that most directly addresses the phenomenon of the Underground Railroad. According to the artist, the starkly bare tree and surrounding night sky are meant to reference the experiences slaves had escaping during cold and dark nights. Biggers incorporated the quilt in order to reference the historical controversy over whether coded messages were stitched into blankets by abolitionists. He points out that it is unclear whether the quilts present historically salient evidence of communication or if they have no importance outside of their aesthetic value. “History is largely conjecture. It is guesses...
Biggers explains that “Constellation” incorporates diverse cultural influences in an attempt to challenge the way individuals examine the history of the Underground Railroad and the field of history as a whole. Biggers uses Rumi’s poetry to this end and finds that it reveals slavery as a global, rather than an individual, issue. “The world has indulged in [slavery] in various forms throughout time,” he says. For Biggers, this is just one instance of how American history should be examined in a larger, international context; more connections...
...painting “Leda and the Swan,” inspired by the W.B. Yeats poem of the same title, is an intriguing conflagration of textures and shapes that arrest the eye with their unsettling imagery and piercing detail. Meanwhile, the eerie images of “Planting Railroad Spikes,” in which words mingle with abstract figures, verge upon the grotesque in a powerfully poignant elicitation of emotion.These personally symbolic, abstract renderings reach a pinnacle in the centerpiece of the exhibition, an oil on canvas diptych consisting of a portrait of the artist?...
Often lifting stray lyrics and imagery from obscure folk songs, the bulk of Dylan’s work thus far has played out like a cryptic cut-and-paste ode to Americana, complete with rowdy railroad men, brassy broads, dirt roads, and plenty of cigarette smoke. Atypically relinquishing song-writing duties on “Christmas in the Heart,” Dylan refrains from dramatically reworking the classics, instead blending his unique brand of gravelly gravitas with the schmaltzy sound of sleigh bells to surprisingly pleasant effect. Hilariously backed by a perfectly earnest bunch of session singers, Dylan?...
Spirituals sent coded messages. As Frederick Douglass wrote, when he and his comrades sang, "O Canaan, sweet Canaan,/ I am bound for the land of Canaan," overseers believed they were worshipping the white god. But to them, it meant they were about to escape on the Underground Railroad. The movement's famous conductor, Harriet Tubman, was called the Moses of her people...