William Christenberry
"Site/Possession"
University of Mississippi Museum July 20th through September 21, 2008
Artist William Christenberry visited Ole Miss, just in time for the circus that is the preparation for the first Presidential Debate. Unfortunately, he will miss the actual debate and other related festivities. Christenberry, 71 years-old and an Alabama native, experienced firsthand the thick clouds of the intense civil rights movement that swept the South in his younger years. He is most famous in the art market for his photographic documentation of the rapidly disappearing vernacular architecture of Alabama. However, he is currently showing sculptures and wall art, decades in the making, that address the darkness and turmoil of racism and more specifically, the hatred forever entombed within the Ku Klux Klan.
His exhibition at Ole Miss included sketches, paintings and sculpture. The real attraction for all those who are not familiar with his work, is Christenberry's "Klan Tableau Room."
The importance of this work is boundless. The reaction to the work on campus at Ole Miss was all across the board. What truly disturbed me, was not the work itself, but the way the tableau room was disguised. A long line, two security guards and a big black curtain kept visitors from just happening upon what is the creepy, Halloween-ish Klan Tableau Room.
Once inside the twenty by twenty foot room, the lighting is dim, with blue and red spotlights on the strange little Klan dolls posed in various positions. Many are covered in dripping wax, pierced with needles, bound by Confederate flags, or packed into rusty cages. Visitors walked in serious silence around the square path, some taking the time to bend down to see the small figures. Others giggled at the strangeness of it all. Some looked truly alarmed and moved more quickly through the exhibit.
It seemed that Christenberry's Klan dolls and drawings within the tableau room depicted the Klan torturing and humiliating itself, rather than torturing its usual victims. This fact is what makes Christenberry's work so very accurate and complete. In a world where one hatred fades, only to be filled by a new hatred, it is important to note that those who hate so much, so fiercely and so fully, can never love themselves.
Joseph Williams, a senior in Journalism at Ole Miss noted in The Daily Mississippian that
Teresa Wiltz, a writer for the Washington Post called Christenberry's Klan subject matter too, "old-school." To me, and to Williams, Wiltz's dismissal of the work all together is quite superficial. Wiltz, who experienced the Klan first hand on several occasions, points out that Christenberry's neglect to include actual Klan victims through history in the tableau room makes his work obsolete, when in all reality this work will always be very relevant. Williams writes,
"Few would say Picasso's 'Guernica' is 'old-school' as the Spanish Civil Way is so long past. Such work holds up a particular event only to show us the universal nature of hate and violence embedded therein. To miss this point is to miss the point of art."The only thing that I'm sorry that Christenberry will miss is the great circus in town that is the Debate 08! It is interesting to note that all roads leading into campus are blocked off starting right at the University Museum. It seems that the "Site/Possession" Exhibit is over, but the University Museum website has not been updated since August 30, 2008 and the next exhibit is not yet on the map. Perhaps letting the exhibit lapse into debate weekend would have been too much for Oxford to handle. The town is busy washing its face and shaking out the patriotic bunting. Not to mention all the goodies the folks are busy making over at Walmart!
