ACT 3:
Post-Racialism and Othello
Why would Wilson revisit Othello in 2013, a decade after his first Othello-inspired black Murano glass works were exhibited at the Venice Biennale? I argue that Wilson’s interest in the character participates in a broader cultural phenomenon in the 2010s, one where he was not the only artist to reference Othello. For Wilson, though, the goal was to place the viewer in Othello’s position and thereby force them to reckon with race. One could even call Wilson’s mirror an “anti-mirror,” as Arnaud Maillet described all black mirrors, since it does not reflect but rather absorbs an image.[1] This sentiment is echoed by Wilson’s own words who said in an interview regarding these ideas of absorption, reflection, and interiority, “[There] was a desire to take the materials of power and wealth and to reveal the overwhelming nature of excess. And you are absorbed into the mirror as matter rather than vision—you become part of this excess….[my Italics].”[2] It is apparent that Wilson wanted the viewer to be a part of the mirror, not just as a byproduct of its ability to reflect them. Thereby Wilson was critiquing the idea of “post-racialism,” the idea that American society is past racial issues, and its connection to colorblindness ideology, the choice to not “see” skin color.[3] Paired with the black Murano glass, I Saw Othello’s Visage in His Mind shows the fallacy of post-racialism and its connection to colorblindness ideology, proving that one cannot ignore skin color and showing the subsequent effects of such racial stereotyping that played in Othello’s downfall.
[1] Maillet, The Claude Glass, 74.
[2] Fred Wilson, “Shifting connections: Fred Wilson (Part 2) by Kathleen MacQueen,” interview by Kathleen MacQueen, BOMB Magazine, May 17, 2012, https://bombmagazine.org/articles/shifting-connections-fred-wilson-part-2/.
[3] Touré, “Forty Million Ways to Be Black,” 12; Helen A. Neville et al., “Introduction,” in The Myth of Racial Color Blindness: Manifestations, Dynamics, and Impact, ed. Helen A. Neville, Miguel E. Gallardo, and Derald Wing Sue (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2016), 5; It should also be stated that the cultural moment of the 2010s also saw the emergence of “post-Blackness,” a term that sounds synonymous to “post-racialism” but is actually contradictory. See, Derek Conrad Murray, “Introduction,” in Queering Post-Black Art: Artists Transforming African American Identity After Civil Rights (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2016), 2 and Thelma Golden, “Introduction,” in Freestyle (New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 2001), 14.