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Teaching Kaepernick

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Anthropology is the study of humans, and what it means to be human. Given its interweaving lenses, you cannot study humanity without inevitably diving into the interplay of biology and culture. Because being human is both: We are biological organisms and products of evolution, just like any other species on the planet, yet we are the only species left who can create art, think symbolically, and create definitions of ourselves that are both identities and boundaries between groups.

As a professor, I never thought that I was being political when I taught anthropology courses. I always considered current anthropology to be mostly above politics.

Occasionally there would be a conflict when fundamentalist religion bumped into evolution. In states like Alabama, biology textbooks still came with an “evolution disclaimer” sticker affixed to the cover. This conflict rarely made it into my classroom though, because in some ways anthropologists teach it all: the biology, the culture, and the vast array of the human experience.   

But the conversation and the classroom in 2018 feel different. And because of this, I now discuss Colin Kaepernick in my anthropology courses. Before we talk about Kaepernick, though, we have to put him in the middle of a conversation that many Americans may not be fully aware of.

I have always taught that biologically, the categories of race that we define in the US aren’t real. But the cultural constructs we call races are very real, and very much influence the day to day lived experiences of the people in them. I never thought of this as political. The fact that racism in the U.S. means unequal access to resources, unequal health outcomes, unequal pay, among a myriad of other ongoing systemic issues was always just reality.

We all know the current political climate in the U.S. has changed things. Everything I teach is political now, because everything is political. Anthropologists, especially those doing applied work in the community, strive to be a voice of the marginalized and disenfranchised. Speaking about the lack of access to resources for members of our communities in the U.S., using data, facts, and long-term studies, suddenly place us at the end of a political spectrum that is somehow in opposition to what some of our country’s elected officials are trying to maintain.

I don’t teach about any of these things because they are political. I teach them because they are anthropology. I teach that black women in the US are 3 to 4 times more likely to die in childbirth; that fear of deportation for immigrants leads to chronic stress and lowered health outcomes; that lack of food choices for rural Native Americans influences nutrition-related disparities; that black Americans die at the hands of law enforcement at rates sometimes twice as high as other groups.

These are examples of how culture and biology uniquely intersect in the U.S. and how our legacy of racism shapes who we are today.

Back to Kaepernick: I don’t teach about Kaepernick because he has become a political figure, I teach about him because he is an anthropological one.  

When Kaepernick first started his peaceful protests during the national anthem in 2016, he became a cultural change agent in one of the most American spaces possible – football. In 1976, cultural anthropologists first described the popularity of American football in the framework of capitalism.

Football is popular because it requires what a successful capitalist way of life also requires, competition. Players and coaches who work the hardest and are the most spirited win. Football, therefore, intersects deeply with certain American economic and traditional values. Importantly for the conversation surrounding Kaepernick, the American ideal of a good football player is one who is diligent, dedicated, and denies his own self-interest for the good of the team.

This is not the first time sports and social justice have collided. Ten years before football was described this way, Muhammed Ali refused to be drafted into military service in protest against the Vietnam War. While his critics were never short of material, one statement was rarely, if ever, made: That Ali should fall in line because that’s what boxers should do. There is no cultural expectation that boxers play by some great set of American rules. People forget that Ali was stripped of his titles and his case was eventually decided on by the Supreme Court.

Kaepernick draws attention to a very real American inequity while simultaneously bucking a sacred American ideal. This is anthropology at its core. And this is why taking a knee hits such a deep vein of discomfort with some Americans, and inspires others.

While we follow growing support and dissent for his voice, what we are also seeing is a wave of cultural change as American values shift and evolve to reflect the complexities of the 21st Century. This is what cultures have always done and will continue to do: develop and morph as the landscape of opportunities, and access to these opportunities, changes with them.

Photo from Benjamin Crump, Esq

One of these complexities is that people of color die at the hands of law enforcement at a disproportionate rate compared to the rest of the population. Kaepernick chose to #TakeAKnee to highlight this disparity by using football as his platform. People objecting to anything that is outside the norms of group dynamics, the NFL included, is as old as culture itself.

I teach about these things not just because they are anthropology, but because they are unavoidable in the current political climate. And while the real concern is for the protection of communities who do not feel safe, there is another message that I want my anthropology students to take away when we talk about Kaepernick: that the power to change an entire culture can be found in just one person, and that they also have that power regardless of who they are or where they come from.     

#AnthropologyAF

Building a Bigger Catwalk: Rudy Lopez Brings His Vision to Richmond’s Fashion Scene

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During his first year as a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, Rudy Lopez helped orchestrate the largest end-of-year showcase the fashion department has ever seen, held at the Main Street Train Shed. This is a dramatic achievement for Lopez, who, even a year ago, thought working as a professor at VCU was far from likely. After years of failed starts and stints in retail to pay the bills, he’s at the forefront of campus fashion, and branching out city-wide.

This article originally appeared in RVA #33 Summer 2018, you can check out the issue here, or pick it up around Richmond now. 

Lopez, originally from the Philippines, grew up in a family of achievers. His father was a doctor, his sister a financial executive; another sister went into the arts and became a sculptor. He came of age during the 1990s East Coast skateboarding scene. Although he loved to draw from his earliest years, he really explored his creative side while playing in bands and traveling to hardcore punk shows in DC. When it came to a career, he wasn’t sure where his many interests and energy would lead.

Lopez took his first shot at college at George Mason University, where he quickly partied his way to academic probation. The summer after his first year, while talking about his future, a friend asked if he could see himself drawing more. Lopez immediately thought, “Yes, of course.” He researched art schools and sent in five drawings to VCU; his journey through art school started that fall, in 1998.

The words of Dean Richard Toscan during orientation shaped him in ways that probably weren’t expected — he still remembers them today: “If you think you are the hot-shot artist in [your] high school, look around; you’re one of 500.”

“I felt way over my head,” Lopez said. “I wasn’t that artist.” Self-fulfilling or not, his prophecy turned out to be right — but something good still came of his struggles through the school’s foundation classes, which he called “art bootcamp.” The summer after that first year, Lopez received an invitation to help out with a fashion show in New York, hosted by Organization for Returning Fashion Interest (ORFI).

“They needed help putting on the fashion show, filling out model sheets, organizing garments, sending invitations; the grunt work,” Lopez said. He hopped a train to New York, where he went 48 hours without any sleep.

“I was surrounded by creatives,” he said. “I felt this overwhelming wave of passion.”

Photo By: @rudyhlopez

When he returned to VCU, he turned to the fashion department to merge his newfound interest with his desire to be creative. He pursued the Fashion Merchandising track, thinking he could study design later if he wanted. Future internships led him to new contacts in New York and revelations about his career path. After graduation, Lopez attended Parsons School of Design, where he studied fashion graphic design.

From Parsons, he worked his way back to Richmond’s Need Supply Co., where he worked as a store manager before opening Henry, a streetwear shop on Broad Street, in 2006. Although the store earned acclaim, and is seen as the foundation for the current streetwear scene in the Broad Street Arts District, it didn’t survive the economic downturn, closing in 2008.

Lopez was discouraged. “It got to a point where I hated the Richmond fashion scene,” he said. He and his wife decided it was time for a break from the city, returning to Lopez’s native Philippines for about five months. However, he came back for a position at VCU, as a manager at the campus technology store.

While there, an assistant professorship opened up at the Fashion Department in VCU. “They asked me to interview,” Lopez said, and he went for it, despite thinking it was a long shot. Fortunately, he got the job, and said he couldn’t be happier with the work, especially mentoring students like himself who struggle to find their passion.

“I love it — teaching, guiding, and mentoring,” Lopez said. “Looking back at my own path, I always liked giving younger, up-and-coming people advice. I loved helping them and giving them whatever I could.”

He described the team as “a great blend of analytical and creative backgrounds,” looking to “create well-rounded people who can think in a variety of ways.”

Enter Lopez. He hopes to encourage an increasing level of collaboration among departments in the school and with businesses in the community. He says the community is ready for it. “Everyone says, ‘I don’t follow fashion,’ but every single person is dressed,” he said. “You’re part of the cycle.”

During the end-of-year fashion showcase, Lopez invited friends to create music, bringing the community to the campus. Joe Davenport, who performs as DJ Bobby La Beat, laid out live beats.

It’s just a first, small step toward his goal of uniting different communities. “Collaboration this year is not as extensive as I would like,” he said. “When you look at the production of a fashion show, there are so many elements: we have music we need to curate, the Department of Theater could create backdrops for the fashion show, there’s opportunity to work more closely with the designers as they create their collections.”

The physical impact of his presence could be seen in the innovative runway design for the 2018 showcase. The venue selection gave students space to create a runway that welcomed three times as many guests compared to previous years. Compared to a typical 70-foot runway, Lopez said, this year’s runway snaked through the train shed for nearly 500 feet.

“People were caught off guard when I said the fashion show could be bigger,” Lopez said, about an event that was already dramatically larger than prior ones. “It could be bigger not even in terms of people, but to be inclusive of people outside of VCUArts and fashion.”

Ultimately, he does this work because he wants the next generation of fashion students to be as proud of Richmond as he is. He said his work is “a reflection of how proud I feel graduating from the school, and the students coming after me.”

RVA Global: Inside South Africa’s Treasured Bone Vaults

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The city of Johannesburg, South Africa was literally built on a gold mine. Much of South Africa’s wealth was amassed through gold and diamond mining that began in the late 1800s, and it was this mining that shaped the social and political landscape for South Africans for generations. Gold mining also led to the discovery of South Africa’s rarest of all treasures: precious objects that are so uncommon and valuable that they have no price tag.

They are housed in two vaults, where they are kept safe behind thick metal doors, only accessible to those who understand their value. These treasures are fossils that tell the story of our shared humanity, our antiquity, and of South Africa’s place in the evolution of ourselves.  

There is a place outside Johannesburg known as the Cradle of Humankind. The area, home to nearly a dozen fossil sites, has been named a World Heritage Site and is riddled with caves. It was in these caves that miners first discovered fossils of our ancestors – even though they weren’t looking for them or knew what they were. Quarrymen in the area were digging for travertine or flowstone, a type of limestone that forms when water moves through caves, to use in the process of purifying gold. They also unintentionally blasted out treasure troves of fossils that had been collected and protected in the caves for millions of years.

Cradle of Humankind, South Africa

Some foremen collected these fossils for fun, some ignored them, and some displayed them as decorations on their mantles. In the early 1920s, a fossil skull from a lime mine in a different region in South Africa took a long, circuitous journey to eventually reach the lab of Professor Raymond Dart, an anatomist in the medical school at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

He knew almost immediately what he held in his hands: a toddler from a species that showed characteristics of both humans and our closest ape relatives.

That skull, known as the Taung Child, was the first fossil of a human ancestor identified in Africa. The discovery of that skull, fortuitous as it was, revolutionized our understanding of our own origins, and led to the exploration of the Cradle of Humankind and the discoveries of hundreds of other fossils that help us piece together parts of the mysterious puzzle of how we became human.

Taung Child

Limeworks dumps from miners at sites like Swartkrans, Kromdraai, and Sterkfontein in the Cradle became fodder for paleoanthropologists, or scientists studying the evolution of our species. They searched and scoured for pockets of bones that had become fossilized, discovering extinct monkeys, giant hyenas, antelopes that fell prey to leopards, and tantalizing clues to what our ancestors looked like millions of years ago. They discovered an adult of the Taung Child species of Australopithecus, calling her Mrs. Ples (the original genus name, Plesianthropus, wasn’t sexy enough for the newspapers), and skulls representing a lineage of ancestors that eventually went extinct.

But for decades, scientists working in South Africa fought a losing battle: European scientists refused to believe that human ancestors were to be found in Africa.

Among other concerns, the predominantly white, male scientific community could not reconcile their racist views of humanity with an African ancestry for our species. It was anthropologists, in fact, who introduced racism as a “science” first, organizing humans in a hierarchy based on attributes that were only skin-deep. An African origin for humanity upended this hierarchy, muddying what many European scientists grasped at to maintain white supremacy, forcing them to acknowledge that the data they collected and analyzed were biased from the beginning.   

Australopithecus

In Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa, my study abroad students from VCU and I wound our way into the basement of the Ditsong Museum of Natural History to a thick door with a keyhole in the middle. We were escorted by the first black African woman to hold the position of Curator of Plio-Pleistocene Palaeontology, Dr. Gaokgatlhe Mirriam Tawane. Opening the door, she showed us inside to a small room walled with shelves enclosed in glass. She smiled as she pointed out some of the fossil stars protected in this vault, humanity’s most precious treasures, including the bones of Mrs. Ples. She left us there with some of the fossils that eventually helped convince the world that all humans share one ancestry, and that ancestry is in Africa. 

My five-year-old daughter has heard some of these stories about fossils and where we come from many times. But this year was the first time she entered the vault with us, and met who we described as her great- great- great-great-great-great-grandmother. A great-grandmother of all humans, an irreplaceable skull of stone through which each one of us can trace our humanity.

A second, newer vault at Wits in Johannesburg is home to the Taung Child and some of the more recent discoveries in the Cradle, including skeletons attributed to an additional species of the genus Australopithecus. Together, these two vaults house the evidence of our evolution, all the fossils of our ancestors that have been discovered in South Africa, the reasons that South Africa is sometimes called the Mother Country. 

Mrs. Ples, One of South Africa’s Most Famous Human Ancestors

With all the turmoil, chaos, and complexity in the world today, growing racial tensions in America, and rising nationalism globally, a step into the bone vault reminds us that we all, indeed, share the same origin and humanity.        

#AnthropologyAF

Through Masking Tape and Metal, Nickolai Walko Creates His Masterpieces

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Born in Russia in 1991, Richmond artist Nickolai Walko wonders if his fascination with the complex systems of life started on the initial flight that brought him to the United States with his adopted parents at two years of age.

“I looked at airplanes almost as metal birds of the sky, so when I was young, I would love to capture these metal birds on [a] piece of paper,” he said. As a young child, he wanted to be have that which seemed out of reach right in front of him.

His fascination with life, and the systems that hold it together, would quickly expand beyond the sheets of paper he sketched on in his youth. In high school, Walko was accepted to governor’s school, where he was introduced to the most influential educator in his life during his freshman year.

Photo By: Sarah Kerndt

“I took a sculpture class with Virginia VanHorn, who is one of my favorite teachers of all time because she’s the reason why I do what I do,” he said. “I had never worked with chicken wire, or Spanish moss before or anything like that, so I just jumped into it [and] she was a great teacher in helping me pick up these new materials and just run with it.”

Walko’s sculpture classes opened his eyes to an array of mediums with one of his favorites initially being welding and metal work. “At this young age, as just kids, we were able to pick up welding and all these crazy metalworking techniques, so that really sparked a love for working with metal,” he said.

He took up a particular fascination with creating a copper suit of armor, after finding himself adorned in one in a dream. It was no small task for a high schooler, but as it turned out the dream was to be realized sooner than expected.

Photo By: Sarah Kerndt

“At the time, I had a friend who was taking apart her copper roof. It was like this copper flashing that was 70 or 80 years old. She was about to just throw it away, but I asked her about it and she asked, ‘do you wanna make something out of it?’ And I was like ‘yeah totally.’”

Walko didn’t waste any time fashioning this body armor to bring his love of ancient medieval armor into the contemporary. His copper armor suit now sits comfortably in his studio alongside a more recent suit of armor, both appearing about his size, ready for the day that dream becomes a reality.

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This would be the beginning of Walko’s desire to bring historic elements to life using contemporary materials. “I picked up the black masking tape when I was doing a mixed media sculpture class with Virginia VanHorn. I was just doing fun designs, but after that class, the material literally stuck to me and I was really fascinated by this new medium, where it kind of became more subtractive,” he said.

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The process is meticulous and requires hours and hours of work. Walko will sit hunched over what could be referred to as his operating table as he uses his X-Acto knife to cut away layers upon layers of tape. “I’ll cover it all with black tape, then I’ll go in with the X-Acto blade. I kind of call it my scalpel. I look at it almost as a surgical procedure where I’m going in and hand cutting the skin then pulling up every little piece and showing to the viewer the anatomy and different style so fourth in the work,” he said. “I’m really fascinated with the process and just I’ll be going hours and hours and hours into a piece and I’ll just lose track of time and I’ll get sucked into it, I love doing it.”

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The surgical metaphor goes a step further when Walko reignited his interest in complex living systems focusing his craft on the literal subject of anatomy. “[In high school] I had all of these anatomy books laying around and I was so fascinated with Leonardo da Vinci, [so] I really wanted to bring these [anatomical] diagrams to life with the tape, so just like clockwork it fell into place.”

To put in perspective the labor of love that must go into each work, Walko recently sold a five-foot-five piece titled “Galatea,” based off the piece Triumph of Galatea by Raphael and said, “I must’ve gone through a hundred razor blades…I [also] brought in my love for copper as the border and then I used anatomy and stylized the dress. This one took about a year to do,” he said.

While “Galatea” is an impressive example of Walko’s monumental feat in this craft, his studio is covered wall to wall with his works, each more intricate and mesmerizing than the last.

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Walko’s unique mix of scientific history and contemporary art give his work crossover appeal, drawing attention within both the arts and science community. He’s travelled all over Virginia, presenting his work to artists and scientists alike.

Last year, Walko collaborated with fellow Richmond artist Francis Scott Horner for their exhibit, Cut by Cut at Anne’s Visual Art Studio, in which he created his tape drawings on painted panel, then cuts designs with an X-Acto blade to reveal images.

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He says he’s passionate about learning, even though he says “I would never do an anatomy class.” His goal is to create the most holistic and accurate representation of the biological forms he creates. This makes Richmond an ideal place for Walko, with easy access to his alma mater, VCU, and the medical campus.

Walko wasn’t sure what his next big project would be, but he’s hoping to find inspiration on a tentatively planned flight back to Russia with members of his family. If he goes, it will be his first time in Russia since the initial flight that inspired his artistic career.

‘Say Her Name’: The Sandra Bland Documentary and the Power of Speaking Out

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Anger, frustration, sadness, heartbreak. The air in the theater felt heavy. It was as if you could feel the emotions of the audience dance around you from one side of the room to the other.

These were the powerful reactions from the crowd following the Institute for Contemporary Art’s recent screening of Say Her Name: The Life and Death of Sandra Bland. The second installment in their new Cinema Series, the documentary explores the mysterious death of the political activist, a 28-year-old African American woman who, after being arrested for a traffic violation in a small town in Texas in July 2015, was found hanging in her jail cell at the Waller County Jail just three days later.

The screening was organized by Enjoli Moon, the Adjunct Assistant Curator of Film at the ICA, and was accompanied by a panel discussion with members of Sandra Bland’s family, the family’s lawyer, Cannon Lambert, and one of the film’s directors, David Heilbroner.  

Bland’s death was ruled a suicide, but made national news and sparked protests and outrage from the public, disputing the cause of her death and alleged police brutality. Ten days after Sandra’s death, Heilbroner, along with fellow filmmaker Kate Davis, started working with the family’s legal team, following the two-year battle between Sandra’s family and Texas authorities. With permission from HBO, the event was one of few, if not the only, premature showings of the film, which won’t be released on HBO networks until the winter.

Photo By: Sarah Kerndt

At the film’s conclusion, we needed a moment to take it all in, and thankfully we were given one. Following the end of the film, Moon asked everyone to take a moment to themselves. Amidst the silence, you could hear the deep sighs, the shuffling of tissues, and noses sniffling, but the silence did not last long. Over my left shoulder came the voice of a woman who requested we all say Sandra Bland’s name. Her voice was commanding, but the pain she was feeling was not lost in her words. Moon led us as a group to say Sandra’s name together…”Sandra Bland.”

“’Say Her Name’, in it of itself is a declaration to make sure that women, especially women of color, who are victims of police brutality that their voices and their memories are not forgotten,” Moon told RVA Mag in an interview ahead of the film on why she choose to screen the documentary.

Photo By: Sarah Kerndt

After playing the wallflower journalist, quietly observing the activity during this screening, I can confidently say this film is going to shake the very foundation of how people respond to stories such as Sandra’s. To hear audience reactions in real time with the film, to bear witness the standing ovation Sandra’s mother, Geneva Reed-Veal received upon her entry to the theater, and to be entangled in the call and response nature between the words Reed-Veal preached and the audience was both prevailing and agonizing.

This film cuts deep. In fact, the pain is so excruciating, Moon informed audience members at the start that several of the family members could not bear to watch the film. It was understandable. Sandra Bland’s self-titled internet series “Sandy Speaks,” where she provides personal anecdotes and opinions related to issues of injustice against black people, helped to guide us and unfold her story through her voice. Imagine witnessing a film containing such videos knowing the light and passion within your daughter or sister’s eyes was gone forever.

Photo By: Sarah Kerndt

The Q&A following the film proved to be the key that fit the lock, allowing people to air out the emotions building up inside of them. The tension in the room began to disintegrate as the family spoke and conveyed how they navigate their suffering. Reed-Veal’s attitude felt most contagious, the fire in her heart fueled by her continued search for justice burned bright, but paired nicely with her southern decorum and charming sense of humor. She was intent on making her points but was sure not to leave us without some good laughs.

Of the messages communicated to the audience during the Q&A following the film, the point driven home was, ‘Find your voice and then use it,’ in the words of Reed-Veal. If one message is clear throughout this film, it is the power of the individual voice. It was the power of Sandra Bland’s voice to speak out against injustice via social media, it is the power of her family’s voice to speak out against the injustice done to her, and it is the power of our voices to spread the word regarding this tragedy and encourage everyone to Say Her Name.

This film came to Richmond at an important time, when asked about the film’s relevance to our city, Moon had this to say: “When you look at the Sandra Bland Bill, and that having to do with mental health issues and how the police engage, when we look at Marcus Peters’ death that just happened, I think it makes it even more relevant in the Richmond story,” Moon said. “I think as Richmond continues to change as a city, we are becoming a more gentrified city and so with that we need to make sure that police value all lives and realize that all communities and people within those communities matter and all lives carry the same weight, and I think that in Richmond we have done a good job of that, and I hope that we continue to do so.”

The screening took place exactly three years after the initial arrest of Sandra Bland and will continue to tour until HBO’s release. 

 

The Charlottesville Mural Project Selects Richmond Artists for Newest Wall

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Herr and Doughty, Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative

The Charlottesville Mural Project recently announced that VCUArts alums Emily Herr and Eleanor Doughty will curate its latest mural as the project ramps up its efforts to bring top-tier muralists to the city. Selected by a panel of Albemarle High School students, local residents, and arts advocates, the pair began work on the retaining walls at Barracks Road June 5 and plan to finish the mural by June 9. Barracks Road is a designated Albemarle County entrance corridor and connects one of the city’s busiest shopping centers to rural Albemarle County.

According to a press release from the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, this mural project is a partnership between The Charlottesville Mural Project, The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, Albemarle High School, The County of Albemarle, the Virginia Department of Transportation, and local residents.

Herr and Doughty will work together on the design and execution of the mural, which will cover both the Georgetown Road and the Hydraulic Road retaining walls at Barracks Road. The two artists met in their freshman year at VCUarts and were roommates for several years. 

Doughty graduated with a BFA in illustration from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013 and her work has been featured in publications such as Graphite Magazine, VICE, and the Boston Globe, and Herr, a Richmond native, and fellow VCUarts graduate, has been creating murals locally and abroad under the name HerrSuite for the past 10 years. Her latest project, a traveling mural project called “Girls! Girls! Girls!”, challenges stereotypical depictions of women in public art.

Emily Herr

In a 2017 interview with RVA Mag she said that the goal of the project is, “to show real actual women and everything that entails, you’re not necessarily happy, not necessarily sexy, and then also, better representation of people of different body types, different races and skin colors and also, ages and disabilities.”

The Charlottesville Mural Project and has been steadily increasing its commitment to public art in the city over the last year. The most recent piece was curated by Detroit muralist Kyle Danley in the Belmont neighborhood of Charlottesville and celebrates the working class history of the Belmont community, and was completed last weekend. In September 2017 Chicho Lorenzo, a muralist from Madrid, Spain, was selected to create a mural on a massive retaining wall at Barracks Road and features his vibrant illustrations inspired by Spanish art and culture.

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Kyle Danley, Belmont neighborhood

The Charlottesville Mural Project was the subject of some controversy last Autumn after a mural was proposed that would engage the terrorist attack that took place in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017. The mural was gifted to the city by world-famous artist Shepard Fairey, but its construction was ultimately put on hold after being heavily criticized by community members who said that the mural did not adequately address the complicated narrative of the events that transpired on August 12, or represent the communities to whom the attack was directed.