Art Days 2021 | Online Gallery
Art Days is an annual art exhibition started by BU President and BUSM Dean Emeritus Aram Chobanian to support the continued growth of creative arts at BUMC. Now sponsored by the BUMC Provost’s Office, it is mounted by the students and faculty of the Creative Arts Society at BUSM. Amid the political and social climate of the US throughout the past year there have been multiple instances where our nation has banded together to fight against the inequities that plague various groups within our nation. The theme of this 31st annual Art Days is Antiracism. Through various art forms the creative community at BUMC has demonstrated their resolve to oppose racial hatred, bias and the oppression of marginalized groups while promoting allyship, continued education and discourse.
Antiracism Theme: Highlighted Works
Artist Highlight: Ravi Patel
06/1/2020: I’m still trying to process everything that happened last night. I’ve photographed many demonstrations over the years but yesterday’s was very distinct. Behind the anger and frustration were heavy faces wearing decades of exhaustion. Exhaustion of the lack of change after repeated incidents of indisputable police brutality. Exhaustion of empty promises made by leaders vowing for radical change to end such horrors. Exhaustion of skin color being used as a target for police violence. Nonetheless, people marched on. Even through their challenges and profoundly traumatic experiences, people made sure that their voices were heard loud and clear.
Artist Highlight: Jasmine Lee
I pieced together different historical landmarks, culture, clothing while using my body as an Asian American woman to showcase the negotiation, power and struggle of these two modes and everything in between. I constantly struggle with my own internalized racism and feelings of “dishonoring” while also finding forms of resistance as an Asian American woman.
Artist Highlight: Spoorthi Davala
Members of minoritized communities have been inequitably burdened by diseases for many years. Causes of race- and gender-based global health equity are not biological but deeply entrenched in our shared histories of structural racism and sexism. Today, legacies of these shared histories persist in food insecurity, housing instability, lack of educational opportunity, inadequate access to healthcare services, and more. Antiracism as a public health strategy must be implemented nationally and internationally to promote health equity.
Artist Highlight: Daniela Cojocaru
The multitude of colors within this work represent diversity from person to person. Seeds of hibiscus plant symbolize the next generation that must be welcomed to live in an equal society. Let us treat each other with love, sincerity, integrity, respect, so that the next generation can have a life where there is no more pain, no more nightmare, no more racism.
FOUR POEMS ON INEQUALITY
Persistence of Inequalities
It is said, don’t judge a man
until you have walked in his shoes.
But when I found the fellow,
he was barefoot.
* * *
Perhaps I should have given him mine
and tried to walk beside him
* * *
in my other pair.Skin Deep
My brother’s skin is black
and torn,
ripped by modern whips
of prejudice and scorn.
“I can’t breathe,” he wails.
We mourn.Don’t judge a man by his eyes
or skin,
but whether the heart that beats
within
strives to do good
or sin.Slave Memories
We, too, were slaves,
or at least our ancestors were
as we recount each year,
to Pharaoh in Egypt,
a faraway land we have never seen.So perhaps we can understand,
just a little,
the feeling of his people
for Martin Luther King,
their modern Moses,
who fought to strike off
their invisible shackles,
residual Jim Crowisms
in this, the land of their birth,
to which their ancestors
had been brought in chains.Things Are Not Equal
Don’t blacken my name.
If I do some wrong,
just whitewash it.By: Keith Tornheim
ANTIRACISM MUSIC PLAYLIST
Compiled by BUMC Educational Media Office for Art Days 2021 *may contain explicit language and/or content*
Traditional Media
Digital Illustrations
Mixed Media/3D Works
Photography
Written Works
Haiku
Tri Do:
Crimson virga clouds.
Black sands on distant shores form
Lines we’ll too recall.* * *
Margaret Lee:
How did virga clouds
Stop my city with fragile flakes?
Evolutionary miles* * *
This is a kind of call-and-response pair of haikus inspired by nature (as haiku’s traditionally are), its impact and movement from Hawaii to San Francisco to Boston. We are connected by and can be inspired by nature and natural phenomena. Of course, we see that technology also plays an important role in human and natural connection here, since the photograph, modern meteorology, and sharing words, thoughts and the friendship itself is supported by technology.
Art Days 2021 online gallery was created and organized by the Creative Arts Society and BUMC Communications Office.
Team members: Judy Wang (M2), Rishabh Singh (M2), Jie Yin (M1), Wan Huang (M1), Keith Tornheim (Department of Biochemistry), Lisa Brown (BUMC Communications Office).
Works displayed in Art Days 2021 remain the property of the respective artist or author.