cathy mclaurin

Prints/Editions

“Information Bandana”
Screen printed cotton, edition 60, 2011
Distributed at Occupy Boston, Dewey Square, October 23, 2011

I produced a limited edition of cotton bandanas screen printed with information that is useful to someone who is navigating an urban environment with only the items carried in a backpack. With a nod to survivalist fear and urban homesteader desire, the bandana at its base level is a multipurpose wearable object. Beyond its practical use, the Information Bandana operates as a dialogical instigator, opening conversation around consumerism, privilege, reliability on electricity and technology, and accessibility to basic necessities (food, water, shelter).

“Native was paid”
Print, intervention, 2011

This photograph was taken in Cherokee, North Carolina, in 1969 at a roadside stand. My sister and I (on the right) stood with this man while someone, likely our mother, took the photograph. The man was paid an unknown amount of money.

In 2011, while reading Coco Fusco’s essay, Racial politics and racial fantasies Metaphors[1], this photograph immediately came to my mind. I enlarged the 3” x 4” Polaroid in order to understand the racial and colonial politics and fantasies within which I was raised as a child. I wanted to study the man’s face, and my own. For the purpose of this image, he was the roadside attraction, representing some white ideal of what “Indian” meant.

As an intervention, I insert this image into books within libraries, bookstores, and the ones on the bookshelves in people’s homes.

1. Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self, ed. Coco Fusco and Brian Wallis. Harry N. Abrams, 2003 (pg. 41-48).