Stoplight Liberty (2013)
Stoplight Liberty (English)
Kevin Jerome Everson, Stoplight Liberty, 2013
16mm film transferred to HD video, color, no sound, 2 min.
Courtesy the artist, trilobite-arts DAC, Charlottesville, Picture Palace Pictures, New York
The two-minute film Stoplight Liberty is screened on the right margin of the reverse of the wall erected for the projection of Condor (2019). This film is a fast-motion rendering of a sunset at a crossroads in Columbus, Mississippi. It is filmed from ground level pointing upward toward the sun, with a statue of liberty on a plinth as its central image.
Through the short duration of this film, an accelerated recording of a longer exposure shows the roofs of passing cars, movements in the treetops, and the changing traffic lights. The last sequences after the sun has set are almost completely in black — we see only the conspicuous flashing of the traffic lights announcing the end of the film. The copy of the New York monument seen here was erected in 1950 to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Boy Scouts. Everson’s interest in this motif can be traced back to the original New York Statue of Liberty. This was dedicated in 1886 and was a gift of the French Republic to the United States, after the latter had become a newly united nation and abolished slavery after the Civil War. Some sources say that the first model for the monument depicted a black slave woman freeing herself from her shackles. This idea was rejected when the monument was built.
Kevin Jerome Everson
The work and practice of Kevin Jerome Everson encompasses photography, printmaking, sculpture and film. He studied at the University of Akron as well as at Ohio University and is Professor of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Everson has been recognized with the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Alpert Award in Film/Video, the Heinz Award in Arts and Humanities, the Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome and the Fellowship of the American Academy in Berlin. He was awarded various grants, from Creative Capital, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; and the Ohio Arts Council.
His artwork has been the subject of retrospectives and solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; and the Harvard Film Archive. His works were presented at international film festivals and art institutions including the Unknown Pleasures Festival, Berlin; Sundance Film Festival, Utah; International Film Festival Rotterdam; Images Film Festival Toronto; Venice International Film Festival; BFI/London Film Festival, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen; European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück; the Viennale, Vienna; BlackStar Film Festival, Philadelphia; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; MOCA, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; MoMA, New York; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, Washington D.C. His films have been featured at the 2008, 2012 and 2017 Whitney Biennial and the 2013 Sharjah Biennial.
Everson is represented by Picture Palace Pictures, New York and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York.