May 2022
INVITATIONAL EXHIBITION
Marshall Sharpe
Artist Statement
My creative scholarship addresses White privilege and the legacy of slavery in the U.S., specifically focusing on my ancestors who enslaved African Americans in Mobile, Alabama. Based on images from the Library of Congress, my ancestor’s journals from the Civil War Era, and an archive of forgotten family photographs, my acrylic and oil paintings examine how the exploitation of Black life and labor in the mid-1800s produced social and financial capital that was passed down to the present day.
In 2017, the Hawaii Department of Education awarded me a year of funding through a research sabbatical to pursue this work full-time. During this period, I moved from Hawaii to my home state of North Carolina to create an archive of source images, family journals, and interviews with family members. Growing up I knew my ancestors “owned a few slaves,” but I was shocked to discover that my third great-grandfather, Augustus Benners, lived in downtown Mobile and hired White overseers to enslave 120 people on two cotton plantations located about ten miles outside of town. Additionally, I discovered that Benner’s 1850—1885 diaries were analyzed and published by scholars at Southern Methodist University. It was disturbing to realize that the story of my 3rd greatgrandfather’s complicit relationship with slavery was available for purchase on Amazon, yet I had lived 30 years without knowing the story myself. Why hadn’t anyone told me?
The following year, I was awarded two years of funding through a Chancellor’s Fellowship at the University of California Santa Barbara to continue developing the research. Beginning with my own life and moving backwards through time, my research traces my family’s privilege to its true source in slavery. With each generation of ancestors, I create a body of paintings that turn a critical eye to the way my family both preserved and hid the legacy of slavery. By manipulating, painting over, and adding to the archive, I use my practice to pose difficult questions. What is my responsibility to this past? And how can my painting practice support reparations today? The creation of this artwork slices through the culture of White amnesia and apathy, exposing the ongoing maintenance of White privilege.
This work has resulted in solo exhibitions at the University of California Santa Barbara’s Glassbox Gallery, and group exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, the Art, Design and Architecture Museum, and the Woodbury Museum in Orem, Utah. Beyond this work, I plan to explore the ways my ancestors weaponized manifest destiny to seize indigenous land and attempt to erase indigenous culture. William Bradford, a Mayflower pilgrim and longtime governor of Plymouth Colony is my 11th great-grandfather. His son, Bradford IV, commanded the 1,000-man colonial force that killed over 600 indigenous people during King Philip’s War. Drawing on Bradford’s journals and scholarly analysis of the period, I plan to create a body of work that reimagines the pilgrims through a lens of critical race theory. Additionally, I plan to return to Greensboro, Alabama with the hopes of finding some of the descendants of the people who were enslaved by my ancestors. By interrogating my family’s contribution to racial capitalism, my work challenges a White audience to acknowledge slavery as the true source of the United States’ system of capitalistic exploitation and hegemonic wealth.
INVITATIONAL EXHIBITION
Marshall Sharpe
Artist Statement
My creative scholarship addresses White privilege and the legacy of slavery in the U.S., specifically focusing on my ancestors who enslaved African Americans in Mobile, Alabama. Based on images from the Library of Congress, my ancestor’s journals from the Civil War Era, and an archive of forgotten family photographs, my acrylic and oil paintings examine how the exploitation of Black life and labor in the mid-1800s produced social and financial capital that was passed down to the present day.
In 2017, the Hawaii Department of Education awarded me a year of funding through a research sabbatical to pursue this work full-time. During this period, I moved from Hawaii to my home state of North Carolina to create an archive of source images, family journals, and interviews with family members. Growing up I knew my ancestors “owned a few slaves,” but I was shocked to discover that my third great-grandfather, Augustus Benners, lived in downtown Mobile and hired White overseers to enslave 120 people on two cotton plantations located about ten miles outside of town. Additionally, I discovered that Benner’s 1850—1885 diaries were analyzed and published by scholars at Southern Methodist University. It was disturbing to realize that the story of my 3rd greatgrandfather’s complicit relationship with slavery was available for purchase on Amazon, yet I had lived 30 years without knowing the story myself. Why hadn’t anyone told me?
The following year, I was awarded two years of funding through a Chancellor’s Fellowship at the University of California Santa Barbara to continue developing the research. Beginning with my own life and moving backwards through time, my research traces my family’s privilege to its true source in slavery. With each generation of ancestors, I create a body of paintings that turn a critical eye to the way my family both preserved and hid the legacy of slavery. By manipulating, painting over, and adding to the archive, I use my practice to pose difficult questions. What is my responsibility to this past? And how can my painting practice support reparations today? The creation of this artwork slices through the culture of White amnesia and apathy, exposing the ongoing maintenance of White privilege.
This work has resulted in solo exhibitions at the University of California Santa Barbara’s Glassbox Gallery, and group exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, the Art, Design and Architecture Museum, and the Woodbury Museum in Orem, Utah. Beyond this work, I plan to explore the ways my ancestors weaponized manifest destiny to seize indigenous land and attempt to erase indigenous culture. William Bradford, a Mayflower pilgrim and longtime governor of Plymouth Colony is my 11th great-grandfather. His son, Bradford IV, commanded the 1,000-man colonial force that killed over 600 indigenous people during King Philip’s War. Drawing on Bradford’s journals and scholarly analysis of the period, I plan to create a body of work that reimagines the pilgrims through a lens of critical race theory. Additionally, I plan to return to Greensboro, Alabama with the hopes of finding some of the descendants of the people who were enslaved by my ancestors. By interrogating my family’s contribution to racial capitalism, my work challenges a White audience to acknowledge slavery as the true source of the United States’ system of capitalistic exploitation and hegemonic wealth.
Marshall Sharpe, born 1988, is from Greensboro, NC. He is a painter currently based in Salt Lake City, Utah where he teaches drawing and painting at Utah Valley University. Sharpe received a Masters of Fine Arts degree in painting at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 2020. At UCSB he was fully funded through a Chancellor’s Fellowship, the University’s most prestigious scholarship. In 2019, He curated the annual UCSB Undergraduate Exhibition and reception at the Art, Design and Architecture Museum, comprising over 50 individual student works.
Sharpe received his BA in Art from Elon University in 2010. He has a background in education, including two years of teaching assistantships at UCSB, a Masters of Teaching from the University of Chaminade Honolulu, and seven years of experience teaching 8th grade English in Hawaii (special education). He has exhibited his work in four solo exhibitions at UCSB’s Glassbox Gallery, a two-person exhibition at California State Channel Islands, and in group exhibitions at California State University Long Beach, UCSB, the Red Barn, Elon University, the Honolulu Museum of Art School, and Gallery 113 in Santa Barbara. His work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Hawaii Public Radio, Lum Art Zine, and the Santa Barbara Independent.
For inquiries contact the artists directly:
Visiting Assistant Professor
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
www.Marshallsharpe.com
danshar@siue.edu
Visiting Assistant Professor
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
www.Marshallsharpe.com
danshar@siue.edu