Racism

Visual Response

 

ADAM W. MCKINNEY

Shelter in place

Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (Fall 2020)

Asylum Arts

A Black Jewish response to histories of oppression, “Shelter in Place” is an inquiry into social isolation and the physical and emotional effects of anti-Black racial violence across time and space. “Shelter in Place” is made up of several elements, including: contemporary tintypes of McKinney dressed as 1921 Fort Worth, Texas, lynching victim Mr. Fred Rouse at sites associated with the lynching; a mélange of hanging tree branches to reference the deconstruction of a sukkah; and two projected dance films–one of McKinney performing the story of Mr. Rouse in sites of trauma, and the other a hologram about the intersections of racism and antisemitism in the time of Covid-19.

Adam W. McKinney

Adam W. McKinney is a Gay, Black, Native, Jewish artist whose work investigates the impact of history as the persistent pursuit of social justice activism. A former member of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Béjart Ballet Lausanne, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, and Milwaukee Ballet Company, he was named one of the most influential African-Americans in Milwaukee, Wis., by St. Vincent DePaul. More at www.dnaworks.org.

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Written Response

Marra B. Gad

Please find the written piece “Your Life Too” here.

Marra B. Gad is an award-winning author, speaker and independent writer/producer. As president of Egad! Productions, she oversees the development and production of scripted television series and films. A grateful child of adoption, Marra speaks internationally about her own transracial adoption in 1970, and her experiences being Black/White biracial and Jewish through the lens of her debut memoir, THE COLOR OF LOVE: A Story of a Mixed-Race Jewish Girl, winner of the 2020 Midwest Book Award for Autobiography/Memoir.

Marra proudly holds a BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MA in Jewish History from Baltimore Hebrew Institute at Towson University.

Having written her first television pilot in 2020, Marra is currently working on her next book from her home in Los Angeles.