MICHI MEKO
BIOGRAPHY
Michi Meko is a multidisciplinary artist whose works engage with the paradoxes that have shaped his personal history and the shared history of Black Americans, particularly in the American South.
Meko nearly drowned in 2015—an experience that continues to resonate within his studio practice today. He says, “Inviting this life-changing event’s influence into my studio practice, my recent paintings and sculptures focus on the African American experience of navigating public spaces while remaining buoyant within them.”
The work creates a transformative and transcendent space in which viewers experience the weight and pressure of feeling threatened, while simultaneously encountering a romanticized psychological and physical space that feels creative and full of possibility.
“The work incorporates the visual language of naval flags and nautical wayfinding, combined with romanticized objects of the American South as a means to communicate the psychological and the physical,” Meko says.“These references signal the warning of a threat or the possibility of safe passage. Working beyond the physical image of the body, objects of buoyancy and navigation become metaphors for selfhood, resilience, and the sanity required in the turbulent oceans of contemporary America.”
In addition to painting, sculpture and installation, one of his ongoing performance projects is The Cast Iron Cruise Line, which launches cast iron skillet sail boats that float out to sea. “This work has interest in the idea of Black Buoyancy, Black Navigation, and the migration patterns of African American food cultures,” Meko says. “The work seeks to question the extra-heavy weight of Blackness in metaphor as cast iron. Defying all belief, science, and reasoning, these skillets float. This ongoing work considers the oral narrative of recipe and food traditions as generational wealth.”
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
“In the summer of 2015, I almost drowned. Inviting this life changing event’s influence into my studio practice, my recent paintings and sculptures focus on the African American experience of navigating public spaces while remaining buoyant within them . This work contributes to an important conversation, as African Americans in public space are consistently threatened, now more visibly and openly with the
evidence and sharing offered by social media. This barrage of images simulates an experience of drowning under the heavy weight of ten thousand pounds of pressure while being held to the ocean’s floor.
The work incorporates the visual language of naval flags and nautical wayfinding, combined with romanticized objects of the American South as a means to communicate the psychological and the physical. These references signal the warning of a threat or the possibility of safe passage. Working beyond the physical image of the body, objects of buoyancy and navigation become metaphors for selfhood, resilience, and the sanity required in the turbulent oceans of contemporary America.
The use of navigation is one of the skills required for any journey. At a youthful age this knowledge is taught through oral history and becomes the framework for understanding a past and a present mobility. It is the necessary visual device for future expeditions and one's survival.”
