Gigi Salij, Venice Beach, CA based artist with Ahmaud Arbery 25 and Unarmed and Trayvon Martin 17 and Unarmed , 2020, Mixed media collage, 22 x 14 inches each in “Deadlocked and Loaded”. These beautiful, wide open, young faces—just mere kids and snuffed out of existence by senseless violence fueled by racism. It’s just unfathomable that both of them could be gunned down by “stand your ground” vigilantes. Just out for a walk, just out for a jog… we (whites) do this all the time without a single thought for our safety, or that we wouldn’t make it back home. Gigi has a powerful series on gun violence that is both beautiful and heartbreaking, that reflects on systemic racism and also school shootings effecting children.
Salij says, “Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin were born nine months apart. And although they died eight years apart, they died in the same way: both were passing peacefully through a quiet suburban neighborhood, and both were pursued and shot to death by self-appointed “neighborhood watchers” who had been inspired by racist feeling and emboldened by guns. Worse still, in both cases the shooters were insulated by a system that tends to prefer white perpetrators (even armed ones) over Black victims (even unarmed ones)—a galling second injury presented in the legitimizing wrapper of legal process. These twin collages are not portraits of Ahmaud and Trayvon—they are portraits of the crimes that claimed them. By blending NRA-approved shooting targets with key government documents related to the investigations, these images aim to communicate the conspiracy of actors and institutions that forgive and thereby encourage these kinds of crimes.”
Gigi Salij is a collage artist and printmaker working in Los Angeles and New York. Her work reflects various subjects—feminism, politics, advertising, even food, but in all instances engages American popular culture, especially as presented to us through commercial media. She studied at Swarthmore College, and received a Masters in Architecture degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She lives and works in Los Angeles and New York and is Associate Professor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.
Learn more at gigisalij.com and @gigi_salij
