Fence #3, 2020, by Odili Donald Odita
An art exhibition opening this weekend creates a dialogue between Ferguson and Sunset Hills by literally being in both places at once.
“From Periphery to Center” is a new, commissioned work by Nigerian-born and Philadelphia-based artist Odili Donald Odita comprising 15 flags—10 at Jeske Sculpture Park and five at Laumeier Sculpture Park.
“I wanted to deal with this notion that in the center space, oftentimes there’s no consideration of the periphery, and those in the periphery are cast out or called the other,” Odita says. “I wanted to be able to use the art spaces, Laumeier and Jeske, to exist as safe spaces for one to be able to talk about this issue where there would be no condemnation or assault or abuse, so people can get at what happened and why it happened.”
The two locations are separated by a half-hour drive—and tremendous socio-economic realities. But how much of the distinction, Odita wonders, is self-imposed?
“The differences that people want to assign to themselves are really interesting,” Odita says. “America is America—America is not here and only there. All of this is America. St. Louis is not one part and the other part is just a peripheral situation that should stay in the shadows. All of it comes together to make one story, one history.”
In researching the work, Odita says he learned a great deal about the killing of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson six years ago by a white police officer. The May 2020 police killing of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, added grim urgency and timeliness to the exhibition.
Odita says he was surprised to learn that Ferguson and St. Louis city are part of the same metropolitan area. This led him to want to examine the tensions of remoteness and connectedness, to examine how very distinct opinions on a single event existed together in the same metro area. The disconnect is specific to St. Louis, it’s also universal for many American cities.
“There’s always going to be contestation for cities,” he says. “I lived in Brooklyn, Tallahassee, now I live in Philadelphia. When cities don’t have a dialogue between themselves where they can talk about class and culture, where they don’t bring those things up, it creates stagnancy.”
Odita took an eye-opening tour of the city with Bryce Robinson, director of Jeske, who took him through Ferguson as well as neighboring Kinloch. He saw firsthand how the airport’s purchasing great swaths of Kinloch decimated the once-bustling area.
“That was part of the tension that led into Ferguson, and helped spur the situation,” he says.
The Jeske flags are primarily gridded designs. One contains an image of shapes that almost touch but are divided by a line. The others are images that suggest houses or encampments, and division by chain-link fence. Odita calls the main large flag sited at Laumeier, X (Laumeier) “iconic.” A variety of triangular shapes, touching in places, move up the vertical axis of the field to form a “neighborhood” of shapes. The horizontal axis separates the line of triangles and contains a literal thin blue line to represent the police.
“The police line and the triangular formations meet at the very center of the flag,” says Odita. “That is the point of contention, the point of discussion. Crossroads—it’s biblical, it’s historical, it’s a place of meeting, of discussion, of explosion. Anything can happen.”
Viewers should absolutely visit both sites, Odita says. Just seeing one is an incomplete experience of the artwork.
“I want people to walk in the park at Jeske, experience the flags, experience the space, and maybe take a walk around the town,” he says. “And then take a walk around Laumeier, experience the similarities and the differences.”
Laumeier curator Dana Turkovic echoes the sentiment.
“The collaboration with Jeske invites and encourages visitors to experience the city in a much bigger way, and to travel to areas they may not have been to or haven’t been to in a long time,” says Turkovic. “When much of us are limiting our travel, it’s the perfect time to get to know your own city and to really explore it geographically and historically and Odili’s multi-site installation becomes about much more than the objects themselves.”
Odita says it’s his hope that viewers are inspired to discuss their perspectives and rather than a muddying or graying, the views and the discussion form a brand-new, third idea.
“I’m trying to say in this piece, let’s question what we call periphery, let’s question what we call center. When Michael Brown was killed, that space became the center of the world. Art is not a fantasy space,” he says. “Art is a real space for real discussion. I just hope that people take the time to look a bit closer and deeper into Ferguson and its history.”
"From Periphery to Center " opens at Jeske Sculpture Park on August 8 and at Laumeier Sculpture Park on August 9 and remains open in both spaces through December 20, 2020. Both are free.
