Jamin Carter

Website: 

http://www.jaminzcarter.com

Biography:

Jamin Carter is an educator, artist, activist and minister who holds a BFA in sculpture and painting and a MAT in visual art education. As an educator, he has worked extensively in the public school system and currently works as a national arts integration consultant with Focus 5. As an artist, Jamin works in a variety of mediums such as sculpture and mixed media. He shows his work locally and nationally, frequently collaborates with other artists and institutions, and sees his art as an extension of his other vocational work. Jamin spends his life with his wife Becky and three children in the midtown area of Memphis where they garden, take walks, hang out with the neighbors and are usually building or fixing something.well as decorate”.

Artist Statement:

In this work I’m exploring the relationship between black market economics, spirituality, and racial violence in America. The events encompassing these ideas are the death of Eric Garner who was known for selling loose cigarettes (loosies) before he was choked to death by the police and the long history of violent suppression of black progress in the South and across the U.S.

The narrative is created by arranging a finite selection of motifs made to represent racial identities and the institutional forces that regulate the possibilities of black people in America. To interact with it is to challenge the simplistic readings of these realities. Pieces like The Shakedown show the violent targeting of black males in the American criminal justice system integrated with the inexhaustible power of black Americans to produce culture and dignity out of oppression. Other pieces like Still evoke a more private, internal struggle between holding a religious and moral identity in an ethically compromised hustle.

What does hope look like in the midst of a marginalized and criminalized existence?