Bethany Collins

On October 26th, artist Bethany Collins gave a presentation at University Galleries in Normal, IL over the work she's created surrounding the intersection of race and language. Collins started off the lecture introducing some of the first pieces of work she created under this big idea, which she titles her "White Noise" series. Her piece "Don't You Think That's a Little Elitist" (see fig. 1) was her first attempt at addressing race through her work. Collins told of her experiences in grad school, with predominantly white colleagues attempting to understand her identity as a black woman, while not fully understanding the history of colorism. So she poses the question "don't you think that's a little elitist" by writing it hundreds of times over again on a black chalkboard with white chalk.

Figure 1: "Don't You Think That's Elitist", 48x72x2 inches,
chalk and charcoal on chalkboard, 2010.

Collins continued to create work similar to "Don't You Think That's a Little Elitist" through her white noise series, but later found her perspective had shifted. She explained "I no longer wanted to define or defend the identities of others. So instead of writing legible sentences, Collins moved to erasing them with a chalkboard erasure, and then smacking the erasures together to create a powder that fell onto the chalkboard. Her first attempt at this new style was through her piece "I Wish I Was Black Too". Collins explained by letting the rescue create a new image on the chalkboard, the words were set free, not tight and imprisoned.

After the White Noise series, Collins moved into assessing language as it relates to race and systems of oppression. She starts by explaining the idea that as we understand the world, our use of language shifts, therefore language is fluid. Collins collected old dictionaries and encyclopedias to find poetry in the language, and found that often times words will have two different meanings that starkly contrast one another. For example, the word "ravel" has two different definitions; to complicate or to make very simple. How is this possible?

Collins then shredded the pages of dictionaries with these contradicting words, and made them into piles. One example of this work is Bound (see fig. 2) which Collins explained "contains the essence of the language, but changed in form holding onto the residue".

Bound, 1968. Dimensions variable, American Masters paper
and Pink Pearl eraser, 2015.

Another connection Collins made while spending so much time analyzing the English language is that examples used in the definitions of words are often related to either violence or the criminal justice system. While Collins couldn't articulate a reason for this occurrence, she wanted it noted.

Overall, Bethany Collins was a very inspiring speaker. She was able to articulate her work very effectively, naming each step in the process for why she creates the work she does. Her rationale was easy to understand, and her perspective as a female black artist shown brilliantly through her work.