![]() ![]() The second violent episode unfolded when British soldiers fired on unarmed protestors demonstrating against the British policy of jailing suspected Irish nationalists without trial. The unarmed demonstrators were unmercifully beaten by officers wielding clubs, whips and even rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire. In the first horrific episode, a phalanx of Alabama state troopers descended onto a peaceful group of civil rights demonstrators as they crossed the now infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge. Kaino’s exhibit was inspired, in part, by two separate civil rights demonstrations that have left an indelible mark on history: Bloody Sunday of Selma, Alabama in 1965 and Bloody Sunday in Derry, North Ireland in 1972. The ultimate goal, he says, is to signal “that people are not alone.” “I hope people leave with a sense of connection and a sense of understanding,” says Kaino. Visitors can glimpse their own shadows intermingled with those of civil rights protestors throughout history, including the uprisings in response to the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014. When lights are trained just so on these tiny bodies, they cast life-size shadows upon the walls. Barrois face down tanks in Tiananmen Square, and challenge police officers in Los Angeles following the brutal beating of Rodney King. On these “planets,” Lilliputian figures twisted into form by animator and artist Lyndon J. The galaxy also includes rocks that have morphed into ships, thanks to miniature sails made of postcards, as well as rocks that are inhabited by tiny bubblegum wrapper sculptures of protestors throughout history. Hanging among the rocks is another representation of protest - a 15-foot-wide replica of the fishing boat Shadow V, which belonged to British royal Lord Louis Mountbatten who was killed in 1979 when the boat was bombed by the Irish Republican Army. A view of Glenn Kaino's exhibition "In the Light of a Shadow." (Courtesy MASS MoCA) Together, they form a football field-sized “galaxy” symbolizing the human impetus to take collective action when it becomes obvious that something, anything, desperately needs to change. Some of these stones are actual rocks while others are 3D printed facsimiles, cast from rocks the artist has collected at protests around the world, from Ferguson, Missouri to Cairo. ![]() In Glenn Kaino’s “ In the Light of a Shadow,” on view at MASS MoCA beginning April 4, we see thousands of fist-sized rocks suspended from the ceiling of the museum’s massive Building 5. Suddenly, a lump of earth becomes a weapon, a symbol of action, a means of fighting back. But a rock changes significance when it’s held in a hand or hurled through the air. Glenn Kaino's sculpture "Revolutions." (Courtesy MASS MoCA) This article is more than 2 years old.Ī rock on the ground is inert - just a solid hunk of mineral matter that forms part of the earth’s crust. ![]()
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