January/February 2015
Review
Elizabeth Burden
Cartographies: Indictments and Impunities
at TPAC, Pioneer Building
Reviewed by C.J. Shane
Review
Elizabeth Burden
Cartographies: Indictments and Impunities
at TPAC, Pioneer Building
Reviewed by C.J. Shane
Coming away from an art exhibit with new ideas to consider and difficult questions to ponder is an intriguing state to be in for art viewers. Such an exhibit lingers with us and gives us the opportunity to mull over some important personal and social issues. This adds a richness to our lives and to the lives of our communities. In addition, this type of art exhibit could very well be the first step toward solving long-standing community problems.
Elizabeth Burden is a Tucson multidisciplinary artist and consultant who has given her viewing public this first-step opportunity in her new exhibit titled Cartographies: Indictments and Impunities. The exhibit just opened and will be on display through April at the Pioneer Building, 100 N. Stone. This exhibit is sponsored by the Tucson Pima Arts Council, and was curated TPAC Operations Manager Debi Chess Mabie.
Elizabeth Burden is a Tucson multidisciplinary artist and consultant who has given her viewing public this first-step opportunity in her new exhibit titled Cartographies: Indictments and Impunities. The exhibit just opened and will be on display through April at the Pioneer Building, 100 N. Stone. This exhibit is sponsored by the Tucson Pima Arts Council, and was curated TPAC Operations Manager Debi Chess Mabie.
EBurden_The Fallen_
Burden is a painter, sculptor, videographer, and installation artist who has worked as a consultant with community art and social groups to come up with creative solutions to problems. Burden has a BFA in Fine Arts, a BA in journalism, and last year she finished a master’s degree in geographic information systems (GIS). We can now add GIS to her artistic toolbox.
What is a geographic information system? Google’s defines a geographic information system (GIS) as “a computer system for capturing, storing, checking, and displaying data related to positions on Earth's surface. GIS can show many different kinds of data on one map. This enables people to more easily see, analyze, and understand patterns and relationships.”
Burden’s exhibit is about understanding the patterns and relationships of killings by police and killings of police in our culture using a GIS analysis of maps. The overarching issues of race (black and brown), gender (victims are almost always male), and class (who has the money and who does not) are keys to understanding these patterns and relationships.
Pattern recognition is fundamental to understanding what we are seeing. We are called to recognize patterns in Burden’s work. Take for example Burden’s piece, The Fallen, which maps the deaths of individuals killed or tasered by police and the deaths of police while working. The background of the map has very faint printed names of the fallen including “unnamed male.” The “map” is not really a drawn map. It’s our brains that recognize the pattern of a map and “see” it as the United States littered with dots representing the dead and injured.
What is a geographic information system? Google’s defines a geographic information system (GIS) as “a computer system for capturing, storing, checking, and displaying data related to positions on Earth's surface. GIS can show many different kinds of data on one map. This enables people to more easily see, analyze, and understand patterns and relationships.”
Burden’s exhibit is about understanding the patterns and relationships of killings by police and killings of police in our culture using a GIS analysis of maps. The overarching issues of race (black and brown), gender (victims are almost always male), and class (who has the money and who does not) are keys to understanding these patterns and relationships.
Pattern recognition is fundamental to understanding what we are seeing. We are called to recognize patterns in Burden’s work. Take for example Burden’s piece, The Fallen, which maps the deaths of individuals killed or tasered by police and the deaths of police while working. The background of the map has very faint printed names of the fallen including “unnamed male.” The “map” is not really a drawn map. It’s our brains that recognize the pattern of a map and “see” it as the United States littered with dots representing the dead and injured.
EBurden_#I Can't Breath #3_
Burden calls upon us repeatedly to “reflect on the conundrums” of these killings. She provides us with some compelling facts, asks some hard questions, and creates some intriguing images of figures in conflict, especially of black men and boys encountering police officers. The figures are not always easy to see but hard to ignore once you do recognize the pattern of their existence emerging from the maps.
This past year we’ve seen numerous incidents of black and brown men and boys being killed by police. There’s a list that comes to mind, most notably Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Gardner in New York. To me most disturbing were two incidents not as well-known. First is the young boy in a playground with a toy gun who was shot down by police within seconds of the police arrival on the playground. Obviously little care was taken to see if the child was actually armed. And there is the case of a young black father (Akai Gurley) killed in the stairwell of an apartment building when a rookie cop’s gun discharged one floor above. Most shocking about this incident is that the cop waited long minutes before calling 911 and chose instead to first call his police union representative. (Requesting legal advice was apparently more important than saving the life of a dying black man).
This past year we’ve seen numerous incidents of black and brown men and boys being killed by police. There’s a list that comes to mind, most notably Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Gardner in New York. To me most disturbing were two incidents not as well-known. First is the young boy in a playground with a toy gun who was shot down by police within seconds of the police arrival on the playground. Obviously little care was taken to see if the child was actually armed. And there is the case of a young black father (Akai Gurley) killed in the stairwell of an apartment building when a rookie cop’s gun discharged one floor above. Most shocking about this incident is that the cop waited long minutes before calling 911 and chose instead to first call his police union representative. (Requesting legal advice was apparently more important than saving the life of a dying black man).
EBurden_#I Can't Breath #2_
And it goes the other way, too. Two police officers, ironically one a Hispanic American studying to be a police chaplain, and the other a just-married Chinese American, were assassinated in their patrol car in New York. Not long after, a young cop was murdered in Flagstaff when investigating a domestic violence incident.
Burden also provides us with a fascinating look into how different sectors of our society are instructed in Plenty of Ground Between Let Them Go and Kill Them. I have always wondered myself why there is no middle ground. Either a police gives the okay to move along, or the detained person gets a bullet. There have been numerous incidents of unarmed mentally-ill persons killed by police. Of course, we in Tucson are well aware of mentally-ill people who are very well-armed despite gun control laws, and who do an incredible amount of damage.
Burden also provides us with a fascinating look into how different sectors of our society are instructed in Plenty of Ground Between Let Them Go and Kill Them. I have always wondered myself why there is no middle ground. Either a police gives the okay to move along, or the detained person gets a bullet. There have been numerous incidents of unarmed mentally-ill persons killed by police. Of course, we in Tucson are well aware of mentally-ill people who are very well-armed despite gun control laws, and who do an incredible amount of damage.
EBurden_It's Not a Black-White Issue_
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EBurden_With Impunity_
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One of the most intriguing pieces in Burden’s exhibit is a series of maps that display data according to factors such as community income levels, levels of gun control laws, and other factors. I could see a pattern in the income levels map….the higher income, the more killings there were. Gun control laws and pockets of violence and killings do not easily correlate, and we can’t really say why at this point.
In her artist’s statement, Burden says, “While few would dispute that police should be permitted to protect themselves and others from threats to safety, we have passionate disagreements about how they should do so.” She sees her work in Cartographies as “one reflection on the conundrums.“ |
I asked Burden if she’d come to any tentative conclusions on the data she mapped In Cartographies. She said that we as a society expect the police to serve and to protect and to have the wisdom of Solomon while doing that. In reality the data suggests that “the police are in the service of property, not people,” she said. The police get the results that we intend them to get,” she added. “’We’ is the key word here,” Burden says. She asks the question, “How do we change our intentions? We are all indictable until we can answer that question.”
~~C.J. Shane
Learn more about Elizabeth Burden’s work at http://elizabethburden.com/index.html
~~C.J. Shane
Learn more about Elizabeth Burden’s work at http://elizabethburden.com/index.html
