Delaware State University Exhibition

My piece titled Everywhere and Nowhere (For John Brown) is on exhibit at The Arts Center at Delaware State University - Peace & Justice Exhibition.

Everywhere and Nowhere (For John Brown), 2015
Laser prints, key chains, found keys.
Dim: 12" x 9.75" x 2.5"

Detail

Artist Statement for By(e) Default Exhibition at San Diego Mesa College Gallery

I’m a white female artist making work that seeks to challenge white supremacy. For a white person to have their full humanity, they have to actively oppose white supremacy, and I want to be whole. My art materials are the stuff of everyday life - the deceptively innocuous things marking our presence within the spaces we inhabit each day.

Health and beauty aids are things we bring into our homes, put on our skin, and use in our daily routines voluntarily. We encounter office supplies in a myriad of ways, and even in the most impersonal institutional setting, they come in contact with intimate details of our being.

As mass-produced commodities, these materials also maintain a connection to global capitalism, reminding us that we are part of a bigger picture of structural oppression. This awareness can be an entry point into a conversation about race.

I’m increasingly turning to autobiography in my art-making, spurred on by a question posed by antiracist organizers at a meeting I attended:
“When did your family become white?” I obtained some of the materials for these artworks during my first visit to Canada in the spring of 2017, as I pondered my French Canadian ancestry, which I know little about since my maternal grandmother died when my mother was two years old. I even found an academic article titled How French Canadians became White Folks, or doing things with race in Quebec during that trip.

This deconstructing of whiteness gives me hope.

 

- Suzanne Broughel

By(e) Default Curated by Andrea Chung

San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery presents By(e) Default, curated by San Diego artist Andrea Chung. Through the works of five contemporary artists and three poets, this exhibit challenges racial codings and engages in both the revision and celebration of Black History.

Featuring:
Elizabeth Axtman
Suzanne Broughel
Cortney Lamar Charleston
Lissa Corona
JC Lenochan
Jason Patterson
Claudia Rankine
Nicole Sealey

Chung states: By(e) Default aims to highlight an unconscious and contradictory thought, whiteness is the default, but it denies that it is privileged, all while fearing the loss of its position as the “default.” Whiteness is the standard for how we (and others) measure ourselves (and others). It goes unnoticed until it is deposed from its pedestal. White history is posited as American history, ignoring the full citizenship and contributions (voluntary or involuntary) of people of color in this country and the full context of their stories. It also dictates when we can acknowledge our history and when our opinions and expertise “matter.”

February 5 – 28, 2018

New Work On Exhibit In San Diego

These two new pieces are among the eight works of mine included in the exhibition By(e) Default at San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery, curated by artist Andrea Chung.

Group Show Inspired by Claudia Rankine's "Citizen"

St. John’s University and Dr. M. T. Geoffrey Yeh Gallery presents Citizen. The exhibition features twenty artists whose work illuminates the concerns expressed by Claudia Rankine in her book of the same title as part of the 2018 NEA Big Read grant received by St. John’s.

Participating artists: American Artist, Nayland Blake, Suzanne Broughel, Nick Cave, Nancy Chunn, Sophia Dawson, Nona Faustine, Charles McGill, Vanessa German, Karen Hampton, Shaun Leonardo, Maria de Los Angeles, John Lucas/Claudia Rankine, Christie Neptune, Howardena Pindell, Joyce Kozloff, Stephanie Syjuco, Tiffany Smith, L J Roberts, and Hank Willis Thomas