Nia Easley – A Dozen Deaths | The Last Green Book
Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College’s 112th Annual Exhibition
Back to Front: Artists’ Books by Women
Nia Easley, A Dozen Deaths, 2015, laser jet on Neenah paper, inkjet printing and acrylic paint on bamboo paper, with a screen-printed cover, 17 x 24 in. Courtesy of the artist
“On February 26, 2012, a teenage boy named Trayvon Martin was walking home in the rain, chatting on his phone with a friend and eating Skittles. Then he was killed. The ensuing media frenzy gave us multiple possible narratives; most of the factual evidence depended upon the unreliable testimony of the killer, George Zimmerman. I believe we can never truly know what happened that night, but in an attempt to get to the humanity of Trayvon’s last moments, I have created a broader counter-narrative in the form of twelve stories. Twelve is the number of people on a typical jury. A dozen different re-tellings of those fatal events all told from a first-person perspective as if each of the storytellers were experiencing that evening as their self. This book is structured in a way to allow the reader to pull out each set of pages into a long row and let the book stand up independently. Once standing, multiple readers can read all of the stories together. Inside of each set of pages is a series of paintings based on a stencil depicting a person in a hoodie – a symbol that took on a new life with this case.” Nia Easley
Nia Easley, The Last Green Book, 2022, screen-printing and offset printed postcards, 4 ¼ x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist
The Last Green Book looks at Chicago-based South Side sites listed in the 1962 edition of the famed African American travel guide, The Negro Motorist Green Book, through careful photo documentation, observation, and extensive research. What used to be Black-owned businesses and establishments, are now empty lots, vacant buildings or have been redeveloped.”
BIOGRAPHY
Nia Easley is a Chicago-based artist, designer, researcher and educator. Those roles often intersect and overlap. She earned her MFA in Visual Communication Design and practices art informed by methods of design production. This work engages the absurdity, violence, and beauty of contemporary American life, focusing on our shared histories and how they have shaped the current landscape. She has taught workshops at Lekòl Kominotè Matènwa, UIC (Gallery 400), and Yale University. Most recently she is a Lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also holds the role of contributing Editor/Curator for the EXIT section of Interactions (IX) Magazine. Her artist’s books can be found at the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, the University of Iowa, Northwestern University, and DePaul University.