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Roberto Lugo

A Century of Black Lives Mattering, 2016

Now On View

Description

Maker

  • Roberto Lugo, b. 1981, American

Title

A Century of Black Lives Mattering

Year

2016

Medium

Porcelain with enamel and glaze

Dimensions

41.3 x 33 x 30.5 cm (16 1/4 x 13 x 12 inches)

Type

  • Ceramics

Credit

Museum purchase: gift of Joseph A. Chazan, MD

Object Number

2018.14

Projects & Publications

Publications

Manual / Issue 11

Repair
Read Online

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

The Phantom of Liberty

May 4 - December 30, 2018

Modern and Contemporary Galleries

This vase depicts eight Black lives lost through the systemic violence of white supremacy: Mike Brown, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Rodney King, Trayvon Martin, Alton Sterling, and Emmett Till. Tragedies like these, which have continued since this piece was made, spurred the global Black Lives Matter movement, which protests racially motivated violence and discrimination.

Lugo wrote an essay about this work in issue 11 of the RISD Museum journal Manual, published in Fall 2018, saying:
Ceramics has the distinction of being a material that anthropologists use to tell us about what people were like thousands of years ago—it has the potential to keep the conversation going about these lost lives. It makes us account for the existence of people who are gone, and denies us the ability to forget about them. A Century of Black Lives Mattering presents the faces of some of the many people who have suffered from police brutality. I hope it will allow us to think about these lives for centuries to come.

Paula and Leonard Granoff Galleries

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is A Century of Black Lives Mattering with the accession number of 2018.14. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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