Midterm Project Proposal 10/8/2025 - Ishmael Adams

 

    Ishmael Adams 

    Professor Doris Cacoilo

   Activist, Interlopers & Pranksters Fall 2025

    Midterm Project Proposal 

        "The problem, she argued, lies not in our hormones, as women, nor by extension is it in the colour of our skin (if one happens to be non-white) — but in our institutions and our education" (pg.12)

    I believe education is where a large majority of our countries problems start, and could end if educated with a wider birth of knowledge. Education is also where we can see the most cracks in the system. Whether it's language, math, science or most especially history. When history is censored, altered or not shown in it's full nuance we lose knowledge, and as a result of that loss people become more ignorant. Of which in turn results in bigots and ignorant people of all types, ultimately resulting in a lesser system and institution. 

    "So, again, what can we do? Instead of being disheartened by the sad reality, it is perhaps more productive to be proactively antithetical: to misbehave, to talk back, while dedicating ourselves to disrupting the hegemonic discourse from within by showing the gaps in representation, ‘the blind spots, or the space-off, of its representations’" (pg.14)

    One of the few ways to stop ignorance from spreading like a plague is to, as a collective population gain more knowledge to combat ignorance and the spread of misinformation. Knowledge is power, and the people that have that power have control over the people who don't have that knowledge. When people who misconstrue that knowledge for their own purposes, there must be people who combat that misinformation with the truth, and shine a spotlight on the knowledge that's unknown to people.   

     "These are not issues from the past, folks. This is now. We are living and working in an art world that cares little about racism and sexism, a world that appears to pre-date the women’s/civil and LGBTQ rights movements. "

    There are a great number of people who believe that just because we're in the future compared to past atrocities and that we've made steps to leave that history that we're beyond it. That is certainly not the case as the quote above me stated, the fight for equality is very much far from over. The battle for this idea is everywhere, in schools, libraries, governments, both local and overarching, and even in our homes.  

    "Mainstream curators need to join the ranks of curatorial activists working worldwide to institute change, and to collectively work towards transforming what is, in the end, an abhorrent situation for Other artists in the art world."

    The only way to fight against oppression in any of it's forms is to band together, to become an overall collective. Alone we can't make any long lasting changes when there will always be an opportunity for these oppressors to throw us against each other and take us down when divided.   

    For my Midterm Project, my first idea is to do colorful artwork, akin to my selection for our previous homework Black Children Keep Your Spirits Free. For the art piece itself I'll have it's theme depict black revolution, having the Black Panthers take center focus. If I were to execute this idea I would have notable leaders of the Black Panther Party in the forefront, Fred Hampton, Huey P. Newton, Elaine Brown and Gwen Robinson. In terms of painting, I'll in all likelihood paint the Panthers themselves in greyscale and contrast the rest of the painting with bright and vibrant colors. 

My second idea for my Midterm Project is to have an oil painting of POC (People of Color)  musicians covered in a variety of vibrant and eye popping colors. I want to showcase the different musicians of color that heavily influenced music from different cultures and corners of the world that aren't just white people. 

My third idea is a black jazz musician playing the saxophone in a stylized manner, having blue be the main color of the figure, juxtaposed with the vibrancy of the background, featuring colors of bright yellow, hot pink, blood red and light greens. All of which is contrasted with the various blues of the jazz musician. This could represent the joy jazz and the blues brings, but also analogizes the dark history of the genre.