Whitney Biennial 2019 | Art & Artists

Alexandra Bell: I'm Alexandra Bell. 

The work looks at ten days of reporting about the Central Park Five case, in which a white investment banker was attacked and raped in Central Park. The cops rounded up a number of young boys, and of those, five were convicted of her rape and attempted murder, in some cases. They all served between six and thirteen years in prison. About twelve years into their serving time, a young man came forward, Matias Reyes, to say that he committed the crime, so they were released.

Highlighting and redacting are two critical techniques to my practice. I'm really trying to figure out how to force the viewer’s eye into particular information. In this particular series, I use blackout to cover up images, to cover up text that really focuses on the victim [at the time]. I want to reorient the viewer around the idea of the victim and thinking about these young boys as also victims. 

While there are twenty pages shown here, I think overall there were maybe up to forty pages worth of coverage within those ten days on this particular case. And this is before a trial, before anybody is found guilty. The repetitious nature is really important to the framework, especially if you consider that during that same period of time, the week that the Central Park jogger was attacked, there were over twenty-five other rapes, majority of those Black and Latino women, that weren't reported.

It's meant to tire the reader in a way. Also, there's so many elements that show up over and over again. The question that I'm hoping will stick with people is why so much attention to it? For me, it's a racial one, but I don't know if that's what the viewer would pick up.