Last weekend, crowds formed outside the windows of UM’s art gallery in Wynwood as onlookers stared at the display: Klu Klux Klan hoods made out of American flags.
Associate professor of sculpture Billie Grace Lynn showcased “American Masks” as part of UM’s annual faculty art show. She decided to display three out of the 12 hoods she created in response to the current political climate.
She first created the masks in 2006 as a reaction to the racism she witnessed growing up in Louisiana. At the time she called it “American Empire.” After the riots in Charlottesville, she decided it was time to showcase the hoods again. She renamed the display “American Masks” to shed light on racism disguised as patriotism.
“I watched the Charlottesville riots and saw people carrying American flags, Nazi flags and the civil war battle cry side by side,” Lynn said. “It made me think about how people are hiding their bigotry and racism behind the American flag.”
Gallery director Milly Cardoso said it was Lynn’s choice to bring the piece and put it by the window, like store-front mannequins.
This is not the first time Lynn has flaunted the masks to the Miami community. Last October, at one of Wynwood’s monthly art walks, she and the five students in her advanced sculpture class wore the hoods and walked the streets of the art-centric neighborhood holding signs that said, “Bigotry is not patriotic.”
One of the students, who preferred to remain anonymous, described wearing the masks as challenging and overwhelming. Putting the mask on immediately stripped the student of identity and individualism.
“As a Jewish person wearing this KKK mask and to not be mentally affected is very challenging,” said the student, who graduated with a bachelor in architecture and a minor in sculpture art. “Thinking about my own history and my family’s history, it is very thought provoking.”
When looking out of the two tiny holes of the mask, the student said was a “fish-eye view of the world.” The deliberately narrow and distorted view could be another way Lynn was making a statement against the originators of the hoods.
Lynn’s class wore the masks in Wynwood specifically because of the area’s notoriously neutral and open minded community. The group reasoned it would be able to teach understanding rather than hate.
The student said they received mostly positive feedback from onlookers who gave them thumbs up or took pictures to post on Facebook. But then they were thrown out of the Wynwood Walls when security guards “were requested by their bosses to make them leave the property.”
Lynn said Miami is an “apolitical environment,” with many residents from Latin America who aren’t heavily involved in U.S. politics.
However, with her art and the tense political climate, Lynn was able to successfully ignite a conversation.
“I always thought of art as an excuse for a conversation,” Lynn said. “Just like democracy, this will allow people to have a conversation.”
Some onlookers scrutinized Lynn’s desecration of the American flag and missed the fundamental point of her argument.
“It is interesting to note that many are concerned about what I have done to the flag, but where is that same outrage to those who carry the American flag next to a Nazi flag?” Lynn said.
No matter the outcry, she is determined to let the art to stand on it’s own and decided against putting up any signage to explain the work.
“People say they don’t really like it and I say, ‘Good, there is nothing to like about it,’” Lynn said. “It is a mirror of what is going on in this country.”