Reclamation

“Reclamation,” an exhibition of work by Sacramento, California, artist Chris Christion, will run September 9, 2022, through October 6, 2022, in Caestecker Gallery, C.J. Rodman Center for the Arts. An opening reception will begin at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 9, with an artist’s talk in Demmer Recital Hall.

“Reclamation” explores themes of history, identity, religion and inherited social perceptions. The drawings and video works are selected from two ongoing series.

The Fractures Series (2014 — Present) includes renderings of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) victims of police violence. The renderings are drawn with scars, gouges and fractures as you would find in statues and stolen artifacts that depict BIPOC in museum collections.

More than material content; statues carry the power of symbolism. Inspiring an empathy and consideration often not applied to human beings whose resemblance they bear.

In the Context Series (2015 — Present), Christion examines the ways in which Christian interpretations of Scripture have been used to generating racism and ignorance while promoting the values and standards of its Eurocentric leadership.

Christion explores the Rev. James H. Cone’s theory that transcendence, or the act of rising above the limits or boundaries of culturally fixed identify, comes from the ability and the context to express and articulate of ones’ own definition of self.

Mining archives of information from libraries, museums and the internet, Christion examines images of individual and institutional violence against Black and Indigenous people of color. He reorders and recontextualizes these images, filtering and re-interpreting narratives often present through his personal lens of lived experiences. “Reclamation” unearths multiple contexts that mediate between personal and shared narratives.