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Harold Mendez

From Whitney Biennial 2017

Mar 17, 2017

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Harold Mendez

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Narrator: Harold Mendez layers different mediums, creating an atmosphere the artist says evokes “a thicket or a charred chain link fence.” As you look at the work, pairs of eyes emerge.

Harold Mendez: I think of the eyes as being we can think of it as sort of this consciousness. A set of eyes are sort of your memory following you, thinking about past mistakes or history or the way that you carry things through. But I mean I think the work is more about the political climate right now too. I think there's a lot of veiling, shrouding in terms of political sentiments.

If I think of veiling and shrouding of people being empowered by Trump being in office—xenophobia or bigotry or racism, that kind of thing, it's thinly veiled, but it's surfacing in a sense.