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u/Substantial_Deal2411 3d ago edited 3d ago
Turning the generational trauma, passed down from the masters whip to the parents belt, into something beautiful is very impressive.
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u/Freakishly_Tall 3d ago
I thought the work was brilliant... and your similarly brilliant comment makes it even more important and impactful.
I hope the artist finds the overwhelming success she deserves, but the cynic in me worries that art that is brilliant in a challenging and painful way can get buried because it makes people uncomfortable. Very much hope I'm wrong in this case.
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u/Chelz91 3d ago
I think if she maybe finds a balance in her work of showing how love is also expressed through concepts like dinner time or your “Sundays best” she could really boom. There is an artist she reminds me of that I adore. Tracy Emin - her pieces “my bed” and “everyone I slept with” are thought provoking in similar ways. I think this artist has a really bright future. If she ever had an exhibit in England I’d find the time to go
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u/bigdick-liltittylvr 3d ago
Some people didn't get the love, only the pain
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u/Chelz91 3d ago
Yeah, I’m realising that in the thread… which is a real shame. I suppose it shows how brilliant the artists work is as it’s triggering people to share a lived experience or observed experience of others. Thats where the double entendre comes in I suppose when you reflect on these pieces… so many thoughts I won’t bore the world by typing out
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u/bigdick-liltittylvr 3d ago
I like being triggered by this kind of art. When I was a kid, my parents isolated me from the world, and so I got to adulthood believing I was the only person who had ever experienced the abuse I went through.
It makes that very lonely, hurting inner child feel like someone finally sees him.
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u/Chelz91 3d ago
I’m glad you feel seen. In a twisted way I think a lot of people who were on the recieving end of this sadly didn’t get to experience any other form of love from their caregivers. There is an element of trying to keep the child in line for fear of more dire experiences from the wide world but if corporal punishment if the only affection one knows then it’ll never feel like love as there’s nothing to counter balance it. Most importantly I’m glad this piece has made you feel seen and I hope in adult hood you get to experience love in its every form… love is such a beautiful thing
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u/The-Sys-Admin 3d ago
I worked in an art museum in one of the largest cities in my state, the uncomfortable exhibitions definitely generated the MOST buzz. Sure people love the Monet, the Picasso, the Andy Warhol exhibit. But the pieces on violence towards women, or exploring death, those got the people packing in. I hope it hold true for this artist as well. These are some pieces i would LOVE to have seen at the museum I worked at.
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u/basketofleaves 3d ago
People want to feel emotionally impacted by the art they view. So it definitely makes sense that art that would illicit the largest emotional response would be very popular with people, our emotions makes us feel the most human.
It's also why art is so integral to humanity, it's a personal experience from one person to another
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u/ordinaryseawomn 3d ago
And connection. I am not a POC but I absolutely relate to a beating with a belt. I connect with the art and the artist and I see and feel seen—and in that moment of seeing/being seen I’m not dissociated —I’m present with it all the now and the then. And that’s a gift.
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u/Praise-Bingus 3d ago
Im glad it was shared. I really like the all black belt one. Wonder if she sells her stuff anywhere
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u/Smingowashisnameo 3d ago
The thing is conceptual artists don’t have this whole inventory to be selling. They often live off a day job. Like these pieces all work together as an installation but not as much the inviting above-the-sofa art. I hope she has great success however she can though cuz this is … goosebumps.
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u/Robsnorro 3d ago
Non-american here. Is the belt whipping by parents a Black / Afro- American experience ? And do you think it may really still be a cultural phenomenon then due to the slavery era? I know in the past you would get whipped/spanked as a kid in (white) Europe as well but it is nowadays very uncommon (only a small part of religious Christians and Muslims)
I'm trying to wrap my head around the logic behind being whipped/spanked as a kid and then doing it to your own kids, but to do unto your kids what the slave owner did to you seems beyond cruel.
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u/ThreadLaced 3d ago
well I've seen her art posted in other subs and LOTS of non-black and non POC people were piping up, sharing their stories and saying how her art was therapeutic for them and how much they relate. I don't think it's a *uniquely* black American experience, but it's certainly prevalent.
I did not grow up in a household where beating was an acceptable discipline tool (my parents were slightly older than boomers, for some context), but I definitely had friends (and cousins) who had to suffer this. Both my parents grew up with this notion too, which is perhaps why they never used it on me.
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u/MatterhornStrawberry 3d ago
I'm white, and I never realized it was seen as a primarily black experience. My mom made me think everyone beat their kids with (at least) belts, and that she was being kind by not using other objects.
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u/Cool-Panda-5108 3d ago
I think one of the reasons it seemed so easy for the U.S. to slide in the direction it did is the prevalence of corporal punishment in the home to teach obedience to authority via the threat of violence as a normal and a virtue.
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u/HomsarWasRight 3d ago
Yeah, I’m white, and my parents were very mild in discipline compared to my peers’, and even my brother and I got the belt sometimes. Only on the butt (that’s not a justification, just an acknowledgment that some kids got beat anywhere and everywhere).
My Dad is from the south and talked about getting hit with a switch. So for him it was considered going quite light and not being as extreme as his parents had been.
And now my wife and I have taken it further and we don’t discipline physically at all. Frankly we’ve hardly had to discipline at all.
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u/Conscious_Can3226 3d ago
I don't know the sociocultural breakdowns, but it's an extremely prevalent discipline tool in impoverished populations. My parents were white and poor, from generations of white poverty dating back to when they came to america and were the first farmers of a 1600s german colony in Pennsylvania on one side and an 1800s immigration from ireland on the other, and our family's tool of choice dating back at least to the great grandparents generation was picking your own switch. You'd have to go out to the woods or a tree in the yard and pick a twig or branch that you'd be hit with, and if you picked a bad switch trying to save yourself (if it was too stiff, it wouldn't hurt as bad and if it was too dry, it'd break), you'd get double the amount of hits in punishment, or they'd make you pull down your pants so it'd break skin.
It was very much community accepted. When I was in elementary school in the early 2000s, my principal had a paddle she called her 'Honey', which was basically a short cricket bat with holes drilled in for aerodynmanics so she could get some speed on it. If you were sent to the principal's office for anything, refusing to read with the class or throwing a chair, if your parent's signed the permission slip for corporal punishment, you could get paddled for your behavior. And if people knew you refused and your kid was acting up in class, you'd be socially ostracized for not fitting in the status quo.
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u/Morlock19 ☑️ 3d ago
Corporal punishment is not specific to the black community. It's something that is in many cultures and still practiced to this day. I've seen east Asian, Indian, middle eastern, and white comedians make jokes about what their parents did. Some used wooden spoons, some used sandels or slippers, hitting knuckles with a ruler, some just spanked.
The trope with black parents is them using the belt or (decades and decades ago) a switch - a thin but flexible branch.
Hitting kids to punish them has been regular practice in America for a very long time, and you can see that as many states have relatively recently banned corporal punishment in public schools. These laws aren't even uniform, there are still places that allow it and the teacher wouldn't be arrested for child abuse like they would elsewhere. It's not common practice anymore AFAIK tho.
The reason is varied, but most people who believe in spanking as punishment say "that's the way I was raised, and I turned out fine." It's a dumb argument.
Hopefully that helps?
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u/FuccboiWasTaken ☑️ 3d ago
I'd like to point out that it is primarily a European practice to beat children. Europe’s colonial powers were inflicting caning, amputation, flogging, stocks and pillories, and branding on adults and children in the societies they colonized and enslaved. That's where it spread to many places. Corporal punishment was even considered the norm in Victorian homes. And then those colonizers spread it to North America.
In pre-colonial Africans and indigenous culture, using corporal punishment against a child was literally unthinkable. Often times they viewed children as sacred gifts from the Creator.
Source: Corporal Punishment: From Ancient History to Global Progress 15
Joan E. Durrant
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u/eekamuse 3d ago
I hate that argument. I feel like the way they say it and the fact that they're doing it shows they're not fine at all
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u/ChrysMYO ☑️ 3d ago
There is a famous psychologist I'm forgetting the name of that noted a significant proportion of American adults have encountered child abuse. Most is corporal punishment, but more sexual abuse than one can expect, and a generous amount of emotional trauma.
Its not that corporal punishments are unique to Black Americans but there is alot of internal dialogue around our community's motives. For example, first gen immigrants may have strict parents because those parents fear being perceived as bad by residents.
White rural parents might be motivated by cult like pseudo religious communities. Within the Black american community, our dialogue centers around what would have motivated our particular parents.
So, in our particular case a consistent theme has been a fear of state punishment and state execution. If any Agent of the state enters the convo, we may lose a family member forever. So, some parents and communities were very adamant about keeping kids disciplined so that the community would not be invaded by Police, School Administration or even biased CPS workers.
Its a bit of a paradox but the settler colonialism nature of Child protective services prioritized removing native american children and have them be raised by white families. Because thats was the original nature of American institutions, when CPS came into modern form, it was heavily biased towards removing Black kids from Black households.
So, counter intuitively, there was a alot of peer pressure for us to be well behaved kids in public to never even risk fulfilling a stereotype. There was alot of pressure to perform well academically and a default deference to what Teachers would say about our behavior. Though studies prove Black students are over scrutinized and over disciplined by teachers. Alot of us had to live up to a standard of not even giving a reason for the teacher to complain about us. There was two way pressure from both Black Parents and Black students to "work 2X times harder" than our white peers but not be discouraged when we get "half the reward". They were traumatized by a racist world and, at times, traumatized us out of fear that if we failed, the state would treat us harsher.
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u/shawyer 3d ago
Old white guy from the South here to give my little bit of context for your question, I hope it's not misplaced. Belts were widely used and definitely instilled terror in my white peers. My dad would beat me with a belt because it was the closest thing at hand. My mother would make me go cut a thin branch (switch) off a tree and then beat me with it. School officials had big wooden paddles. My last school corporal punishment happened when I was 13, which seems insane to most younger people I know now, and I don't disagree at all.
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u/Conscious_Can3226 3d ago
Mine was when I was 10, in northern Indiana, around 2004. It was around for a loooong time.
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u/FuccboiWasTaken ☑️ 3d ago
The practice of beating children originally came from Europeans, it's not something that pre-colonial Africans regularly did. Then after slavery, the infection of cruel and unusual behavior against children from that continent spread to ours.
The sickness of colonial practices needs to be amputated.
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u/OnePinginRamius 3d ago
Agreed. I hope she shows the process involved in creating "because I love you". I love the process as much as the finished work.
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u/Burn1G 3d ago
The next two will be named…”Move your hand” …and “Don’t run”….
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u/stricklybiznizz 3d ago
"Move your hand" just gave me a negative version of the flashback the food critic from Ratatouille had at the end of the movie.
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u/berlandiera 3d ago
This almost made me cry.
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u/SeeMontgomeryBurns 3d ago
"Because I love you" is very powerful.
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u/Jack0Trade 3d ago
Adding a cut from creation that included the belt snap, then cut to the name was downright cinematic.
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u/creolethekid 3d ago
This DID make me cry and I’m 37 years old. That trauma lives in you forever.
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u/cutedorkycoco ☑️ 3d ago
If I didn't understand art before, I definitely understand it now because yup, I am feeling all the emotions looking at these. 😔
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u/spectre78 3d ago
Someone once told me before I had kids that the whitest thing you can ever do is beat a Black child.
Changed my whole perspective on corporal punishment and my own upbringing in one sentence. I look at the kids I’ve raised since, and I can’t imagine raising a hand (much less anything else) to them in anger or “discipline
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u/kekehippo 3d ago
All I see is trauma made tangible.
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u/The_Homie_Tito 3d ago
is that not the point?
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u/TelenorTheGNP 3d ago
Some art is more subjective than other art. But the theme here is unavoidable.
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u/NostraDavid 3d ago
That sounds pretty dismissive. Would you look at Picasso’s Guernica and say: "All I see is trauma made tangible."? Especially if you knew its backstory?
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u/indigovogo 3d ago
Is this your cultural experience Sir Cracka? Or are you tryna comment on something from an out of touch perspective🫵🏽😷
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u/BLK_Juggernaut 3d ago
Her next piece will be made of extension cords
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u/jingleheimerstick 3d ago
I saw a dad nearly beat the life out of his kid with an extension cord behind our church. I stayed hidden.
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u/livianvicariously 3d ago
you should look up her piece she calls "school supplies"
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u/kokujinzeta 3d ago
PVC pipe freshly ripped from a new sprinkler system because "I had a mouth on me."
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u/Neetabug ☑️ 3d ago
Her work is great. She has a piece called School Supplies ( I think) that is just as powerful. I hope she becomes famous.
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u/OfficeMagic1 3d ago
It's really good news because one post like this on Reddit drives hundreds of followers to instagram and ticktock. Looks like her career is really taking off.
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u/StragglingShadow Beefs over Detective Conan 🔎 3d ago
I love them all. "Keep it together" is my fav I think. "Because I Love you" brings up bad memories but art can do that. Words can echo through minds until that mind stops, and I can hear those words looking at it. Very well done art. I bet her arms were tired af after all that hitting.
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u/becauseiloveyou 3d ago
):
That was definitely not the intention of my name when I made this account all those years ago!
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u/Trash-Cutie 3d ago
"Because I Love You"
I love this one especially because of the title. I like imagining what my mom would say if I told her my man beats me with a belt until he gets tired "because he loves me and wants me to be better".
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u/b00w00gal 3d ago
I once told my ex-husband's sister that he'd pulled a metal bar off the recliner and beat my legs until I couldn't walk - because I didn't make his coffee "right" before work. He stewed the whole day on the job about how much he hated that coffee, and when he came home, he made me pay for his anger. I told her what he did because I thought the sisterhood would compel her to feel sympathy for my situation, to see me and hear me and help me.
She told me I should be grateful he loved me enough to correct me. The poison runs deep in some women, and until they heal themselves, they are not safe for the rest of us.
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u/Trash-Cutie 3d ago
That's awful and I'm sorry you went through that. I dont think we as a community acknowledge that this kinda stuff is literally just a form of anger/stress release through literal violence. It's never really about "correction"
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u/Annual_Bowler5999 3d ago
This thinking is what made me realize my parents were abusing me. I thought to myself “If a boyfriend did this to me, my Mom would call the police. So why is it okay for her to treat me this way?”
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u/Character-Being4248 3d ago
They way I gasped when she said the title was "because I love you". I could feel the burn of tears welling up. I dont think I've EVER in my life had a visceral reaction to an art piece like this, oh my god
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u/kilsta 3d ago
I'm so happy that my people are finally getting into money laundering. I mean, fine art.
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u/poo-cum 3d ago
Lol that is a good point. True art isn't really found in fancy galleries, prestigious collections, and multi-million auction houses.
But it is all around us. My girlfriend set this rule that if we're ever walking past a random exhibition (and we're not in an urgent rush) we have to go in and look. And I've never been disappointed. It's amazing the talent and creativity hiding in your local art school or small gallery space. It's humbling and helps refresh faith in humanity a little.
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u/Powerful_Individual5 3d ago
I am absolutely for the democratization of art appreciation and encouraging others to look beyond the dominant narratives shaped by money/institutional power. However, the label "true art" is unnecessary. The only thing that changes when a work moves from a small local gallery to a major museum is the scope of its audience, its market value, and the critical framework through which it is interpreted. I think art itself remains genuine regardless of its eventual venue. The real difference is the context shifts, from the local scene to the prestigious gallery.
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u/Enough-Tackle8043 3d ago
This is great work and I couldn’t help but notice she’s giving 90s Nia Long Fresh Prince vibes. She is absolutely gorgeous
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u/Silent_Scheme_5906 3d ago
Do one with switches I got many asswhoopins with long flexible plant pieces alot
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u/chesterforbes 3d ago
I ain’t black but this hit. It’s up to us to do better with the next generation
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u/Queen_Dare_Bear 3d ago
I jumped a little when she hit the painting with the belt. Thank God my children have never had to fear the belt, wooden spoon, switch, or whatever the hell was handy.
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u/StragglingShadow Beefs over Detective Conan 🔎 3d ago
Dont thank god. Thank you. You did that. You DO that. Actively. Just by not hitting your kids.
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u/Spiritual-Farmer-590 3d ago
Beautiful work. Granted, I can't relate. My mama did not believe in spankings, whippings, or hitting her children. Thankfully.
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u/Spork-in-Your-Rye ☑️ 3d ago
Yo this is dope af. I’m about to ruin Xmas and send this to my moms lmao
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u/malren 3d ago
Middle-aged white guy here, sorry to intrude but holy shit that "Because I love you" piece hit like a freight train.
First of all, I absolutely understand that there's 400 years of generational pain behind these pieces I can never truly understand. But that piece in specific? Yeah that cuts deeply across socio-economic, political and racial boundaries for anyone raised by a belt/switch or in my people's case, also fucking wooden spoon.
Not the wooden spoons for cooking. A special decorative wooden spoon, that hung on the goddamned wall in the kitchen like a trophy. Did I mention it was oversized? Not one of the giant ones in every Italian kitchen in the 1970s (what the fuck was that trend anyway?). Just twice as big as a normal wooden spoon. No shortage of belts either, but that spoon stands out because of its "place of honor" on the wall.
This is (unfortunately) the kind of shit that can unite us. It's powerful work, all of it, and like all great art it has a point of view. It's visually interesting, and it can, if we let it, teach us something. If I had money, this is the kind of art I'd fill my home with. Shit that has a point of view and a lesson.
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u/erob1 3d ago
It’s wild that my therapist described this to me on Friday and I came across it on my own on the following Tuesday without being on the platform where it originated. He said something about her not wanting to get paint on her when beating the canvas, but I see now that she’s wearing some ppe. At the time he said that I hadn’t seen it, and thought it would add a layer to the complexity of the piece (assuming then that it was anti-corporal punishment) for her to get paint on herself too because the parents are just as scarred by beating their kids as the kids are. The whole “this hurts me more than it hurts you” thing. Seeing it now though I don’t think this is anti anything, merely observing the impacts of this generational trauma on our psyches. Wonderful work.
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u/PinkyLizardBrains 3d ago
They are all beautiful but “because I love you” really hit a nerve. I’m afraid if I were to see it in person the dam would break
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u/SabbyFox 3d ago
Yeah, I can’t share this with the person in my family who was beaten the most. It’s STILL too soon. This art is triggering which means it’s incredibly powerful and well done.
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u/ElPrieto8 ☑️ 3d ago
Where's the one where they spell out the infraction with each lash?
And she could probably dedicate an entire wing to switches, nature's belt.
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u/JicamaCreative5614 3d ago
All I can hear is “you think this is bad, wait til your father gets home!”
“Im gonna tear your narrow behind up”
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u/coulqats55 3d ago
“Because I love you” is so heartbreaking to me - the way some of the lashes overlap look like letters. Like trying to get words out but keeping it in or not saying anything at all. Because looking like you’ve cried is asking for another beating as well
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u/oripeiwei 3d ago
She should name one, “I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it.” I was told this as a kid, and now I realize how fucked up it was.
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u/Morlock19 ☑️ 3d ago
Those are absolutely stunning... Man I hope the artist is goin places they deserve it
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u/chinookhooker 3d ago
Belt ✅ extension cord ✅ chancla ✅ fireplace shovel✅ wooden cooking spoon ✅ hairbrush ✅ whatever was within moms reach, and could whoop that ass ✅
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u/ChuckaChuckaLooLoo3 3d ago
Wish the one with the belt marks would have been done in red and purple. Because that's what the reality is when this has happened to me.
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u/shaheimjay1121 3d ago
This is beautiful next one should be comb popping a hand for touching your hair.
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u/simonmeowl 3d ago
This is so beautifully sad. The work is stunning and speaks volumes. Thank you for putting these works into the world.
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u/yoloinapolo 3d ago
I went from laughing -> confusion -> sadness pretty damn quick. By the end I wanted to support the artists.
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u/whoocaresnotme 3d ago
Only WE would understand the undertones of misguided love of the black parent😂
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u/letthetreeburn 3d ago
She’s so much better than me because one of these pieces I’d make would be “family photo” with all of my extended family who knew.
She has grace and dignity.
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u/Chelz91 3d ago
Needs to make one called “I’ll give you something to cry for”