Claire Rabkin

White Those That Stayed Still

White were once the feathers of birds, and white the skin of animals. Blue now are those that bathed in a lake into which no river emptied and from which none was born. Red, those that dipped in the lake of blood shed by a child of the Kadiueu tribe. Earth-color, those that rolled in the mud, and ashen those that sought warmth in extinguished campfires. Green, those that rubbed their bodies in the foliage, white those that stayed still. 

Eduardo Galeano, History of Fire

Based on the origin story of Colors in Eduardo Galeano's History of Fire, this project explores the futility of stillness and inanimacy. The qualities of the object; it's weight, color, and form, are essentially unchangeable. It is my own action, tending, and searching that can bring life and meaning to being. In White Those That Stayed Still, I confront the idea of my own whiteness, the whiteness of my creation, my resistance to confrontation, and other physical forms of resistance.