Rodney King, Before BLM
- On View
- Visual Arts Gallery
- Museum Maps
- Objects in this Location
- Exhibition
- Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience.
- Created by
- Leonardo, Shaun, American, born 1979
- Subject of
- King, Rodney Glen, American, 1965 - 2012
- Los Angeles Police Department, American, founded 1869
- Date
- 2017
- Medium
- charcoal on paper with mirror tint on frame
- Dimensions
- H x W (Sheet): 30 × 45 in. (76.2 × 114.3 cm)
- H x W x D (Frame): 31 1/2 × 46 1/2 × 1 1/2 in. (80 × 118.1 × 3.8 cm)
- Caption
- It's in the tactility of charcoal, the slow rendering of the image, and viewer's reflected image within the mirrored tint, that a person is absorbed by the drawing and invited to sit with the image differently. — Shaun Leonardo
- Shaun Leonardo’s Rodney King challenges how media selections shape cultural memory and consciousness. The rate by which we are bombarded and distracted by media images reduces life events and history to flashes of select photographs and headlines. Leonardo explores the extent to which we are complicit. As the artist explains, “By forcing one to question how they previously perceived these images of state sanctioned violence, and thus implicate the way we see and receive these images, an opening is created that turns our looking into bearing witness.”
- Description
- A framed charcoal drawing on white fibrous paper depicting a scene from the video of the Los Angeles Police Department officers brutally beating Rodney King in 1991. The drawing has a black background with King's car in white. The eleven officers present at the scene are drawn blurred in charcoal with white highlights, as they appeared in the video footage. The image of King on the ground at the center of the drawing has been removed and a mirror tint glaze applied on the underside of the frame glass, allowing the viewer to be reflected in King's place.
- Place depicted
- Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, United States, North and Central America
- Classification
- Visual Arts
- Movement
- Black Lives Matter
- Type
- drawings
- Topic
- Art
- Mass media
- Police brutality
- Race discrimination
- Race relations
- U.S. History, 1969-2001
- Violence
- Credit Line
- Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture purchased with funds provided by the Smithsonian Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center
- Object number
- 2021.44
- Restrictions & Rights
- © Shaun Leonardo
- Permission required for use. Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.