Paper, book board, ink, PVA, magnets
6″ x 6.5″ x 5.75″
2021
I am privileged to live in White skin. The three outer walls of the pyramid box show three ways of imagining a White person: a blank canvas with no words, “pretty, pretty white” and “White Privilege, White Complicity, White Supremacy.” Inside, a variety of hues, imprinted with hand-made stamps, indicate the complexity of culture and ethnicity no one can see on the surface. An equilateral accordion-folded triangle book sits inside the box. The book, Eye Was Taught To Be White, provides three race-based vignettes. Two tales illuminate how I was raised to be White while a third shows the ongoing struggle for cultural humility to call out racism when I encounter it. Near the bottom of this box, the white paper adhered where it should not have, leaving a tattered edge along two of the sides. Rather than remake and hide these faults, they have been left just out of view, in a tiny attempt to show the problems White privilege presents.
– Denise Stephenson, Oceanside, CA