RING SHOUT by Harlan Bozeman

2021
From the series Failure to Appear
Dye-sublimation print on aluminum
32 × 40 in
Strata edition of 1

“Failure To Appear is a series of photographs and collaged works that explores my layered connections between memory, unknown legacies, and knowledge of self. This body of work is not tied to any location or specific event. It is attributed to my returning to the South, returning to the institution, returning to my childhood residence and the perceived agnosia that occurred while working on a long-term project based in the Arkansas Delta.” —Harlan Bozeman

In 2021, Bozeman started his series, Failure to Appear, after work made for Out the E during his time in Elaine, Arkansas—a place still deeply divided along racial lines, leading to a culture of silence and neglect in a community that has yet to fully recover from deadly confrontations like the Elaine Massacre of 1919. Where Out the E is the result of his continued visits to the region, Failure to Appear is a “reaction” to the work made in Elaine. “I realised that the reason why I went to Elaine was because I needed to be surrounded by Blackness,” he says. “I needed to make work about Black personhood and how my proximity to Black death had altered my psyche.” 

Bozeman experiments with collage for the first time, layering and constructing images using ephemera from his parents’ archive, and stories he gathered from traveling the American South. “It’s not uncommon for Black families to not pass on legacies from their ancestors,” he says. “I am not interested in reconciling these known and unknown histories, but a new context can be established by fusing them into each other.”

A piece identified as a “Strata edition” was produced specifically for our collection.

Dye-sublimation printing (or dye-sub printing) is a term that covers several distinct digital computer printing techniques that involve using heat to transfer dye onto a substrate. For our collection, we have printed directly onto aluminum.