Ernest A. Bryant III is interested in the role played by art and artifacts in different cultures, and what it means for them to be appropriated or displaced. Exploring how images, objects, and rituals carry power, the artist describes his work as an attempt “to make sense of [the world] aesthetically, socially, spiritually.”
The Flight Jacket project, represented here by three videos, sprang from the desire of the artist to gain the blessing of his community before an extended period of travel. Inspired by the potlatch (a traditional Indigenous ceremony marked by the provision of music, food, and gifts), he organized a series of free public barbecues featuring DJ sets and film screenings. The artist held three such “Chicken Parties” across Minneapolis, each catering to the communities to which he belonged. The discarded chicken bones were collected, cleaned, and sewn together by the artist into a garment that he calls the “flight jacket.”
Self- Medication is an interactive sculpture made in the style of an early twentieth-century Kongo Nkisi figure. Mining the tradition of placing medicine inside the stomach and head of these powerful figures, a monitor has been placed into its belly. The return of the viewer’s gaze in this screen forces them to consider what they are bringing to the encounter. What does it mean to scrutinize an object which has been displaced from the cultural context on which it depends for its symbolic—and often sacred—power, and how does it operate as an activated, aesthetic-spiritual technology?
Ernest A. Bryant III, Chicken Party (Prep) from Flight Jacket Video documentation, 2007. video, color, sound. 45 min
Ernest A. Bryant III, Chicken Party (Day) from Flight Jacket Video documentation, 2007. video, color, sound. 60 min
Ernest A. Bryant III, Chicken Party (Night) from Flight Jacket Video documentation, 2007. video, color, sound. 60 min
Ernest A. Bryant III, Self- Medication, 2005. wood, CRT monitor, CCTV camera, “African-Oceanic” museum color matched paint, other natural materials. 10 × 46 × 13 cm
