Press Release: RECKONING
Images: “Reflection” 2021, “White Gaze” 2021, Christina Reed
PRESS RELEASE
February 10, 2021
Press Contact
Meghan Trainor, Curator, M. Rosetta Hunter Gallery
Meghan.Trainor@Seattlecolleges.edu
206-934-4379
The M. Rosetta Hunter Art Gallery at Seattle Central College Presents RECKONING, an Installation and Community Engagement Exhibition by Christina Reed
Artist Reception: February 17, 2022
Exhibition Dates: January 3 – March 24, 2022*
“Christina Reed’s exhibition confronts us with our own whiteness and oblivious racism head on and with ingenuity in her immersive exhibition “Reckoning” at the M. Rosetta Hunter Gallery at Seattle Central College”.
-Susan Noyes Platt, Arts and Politics Now, February 2022.
Seattle, WA – Christina Reed, a multidisciplinary artist-activist, explores systemic social, political, and cultural issues through printmaking, sculpture, and site-specific installation. Reckoning, her print-based, community engagement installation, addresses conditioned assumptions and behaviors that keep our country's racial dynamics of inequity and injustice in place. It engages the viewer in reflection, conversation and action that creates sustainable pathways to racial equity.
Grounded in historical research and her own background of social justice engagement, Reed draws source material from historical records including photography, newspapers and legal documents, and her own photography, to address issues of race and oppression.
Reckoning has three components: Reflection, a large mural of printed and collaged images of US historical documents and White culture behavioral norms and activities; Regard: White Gaze, printed glass pieces arranged to highlight the barriers that White culture builds/maintains to silence and exclude voices-of-color; and Repair, a community engagement piece aimed to generate conversation and Action Steps to disrupt and dismantle racism’s systemic power.
A minister’s daughter, Reed was raised to see the world through a social justice lens. Throughout her career in Human Resources, she witnessed systemic injustice and implicit bias in practices, policies, and systems. Her formative teachers in art and other subjects were rooted in and reinforced social justice expression. These experiences have influenced her conceptual visualization of the transformative power in recognizing, addressing, and solving systemic social challenges.
Reed has been recognized for her mixed media prints and sculpture with a 4culture Project Grant, James and Janie Washington Artist-in Residence grant, the Larry Sommers Fellowship and Seattle Print Arts/Pratt Fine Arts Center Scholarship. She exhibits in solo, invitational, and juried regional and national exhibitions. She received her BFA in painting from University of Washington School of Art, studying with Jacob Lawrence, and Michael Spafford, whose philosophy and practices influenced her artistic and activist journey.
An artist-activist, Reed believes art can be the bridge between conversation and action; the catalyst for empathy, engagement, and change: that through reflection and conversation we can take action to combat the continued impact of racism.
"When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
-Unknown
This project was supported in part by grants from 4Culture, the James & Janie Washington Foundation and Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.
Gallery Hours
10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday
Admission is free
M. Rosetta Hunter Art Gallery
Seattle Central College
1701 Broadway, 2BE2116
Seattle, WA 98122
206.934.4379
Seattle Central College observes COVID protocols: Campus Entry Procedures can be found here: https://www.seattlecolleges.edu/coming-campus/current-campus-entry-procedures
* This exhibition opened and the gallery had regular hours briefly before Omicron caused widespread closures. This exhibition has been extended from an earlier closing date and the reopening of the campus gallery is February 15, 2022.