quiet > welcome

Quiet Refusal A
Quiet Refusal A
2022

"Say Her Name" 2017 oil on canvas.

Source: screenshot Say Her Name

Example of a quiet refusal...
Artist Jennifer Packer often paints figures, images of people in relaxed poses who refuse the artist gaze. Say Her Name was the artist’s response to the murder of Sandra Bland. In what I have read about the work, Packer painted a bouquet flowers in lieu of a figure. The flowers stand in for indescribable grief and injustice. I’m unexpectedly finding more and more resonances between Quiet and new materialism, which feels like it should have been self evident, but I think I’m particularly interested in how a thing evokes Quiet. Viewing this in person in a public gallery enabled a public mourning, among other things. Again I wonder how Quiet enables something other than or more than spectacle, other than or more than resistance or agency.