If you’ve passed by Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) recently, there’s no way you could miss its newest installation. Plastered across every inch of the center and its adjoining store Open Book’s front windows are 148 hand-printed posters, each one with the phrase “White supremacy is ____.” White supremacy is intentional. White supremacy is traumatic. White supremacy is wack. There are 18 different words used to fill in that blank, and some posters leave the blank open, allowing viewers to search for the word they would use to fill the space.
The work’s creator is Ben Blount, an artist, designer, and printmaker from Evanston, Illinois. By leveraging the “power of multiples,” as Blount puts it, and the power of printed word, “Eyes Wide Shut” explores how language, and the ways it is presented, affects us. “If you’re going to avoid [the word], I’m going to put it right in your face,” he says.
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