- Fire etching with sculpted fist comb (detail) by Keith Murakata.
In the middle of polite Seattle, in the midst of "post-racial" America, Keith Murakata is calling bullshit. Instead, he says: Bring back the symbols and the heroes of black power, starting with the '70s fisted Afro pick. He's created a giant one planted in two rough-hewn pieces of wood
at Pun(c)tuation gallery through February 15. It stands alongside the stars of the show: "Fire-etched" (!) prints on wood of historical photographs and texts of, by, and about Angela Davis, Muhammad Ali, and Malcolm X.
The burned-in prints are graphic and precise, but they look like they were made in sand and could be blown away. Their soft surfaces contrast with their furious content, as Ali pounds a practice bag, Davis holds down the podium at the Sheraton in Dallas, and X muses at Ali's (then Clay's) disagreement with him. (Which is the more powerful man in that photograph? You decide.)
- Fire etching, on wood, of 1964 photograph.
Along another wall is another series, of ceramic sculptures based on Captain America. In one, a mushroom cloud rises from the captain's exploded head. Another,
Stainless, is made of stainless steel, in reference to, as Murakata says, the American attitude that our image is non-corrodable in the world (these are Bush-era works). Hiding behind one of the captain's ears is the "hidden impurity" that's listed in the wall label's description of materials—this is a piece of metal that, unlike the rest of the sculpture, will rust and lime over time.
The large fist in the center of the room is coiled tight, and it's called
Rebirth. Unlike the flattened fist with the highly placed thumb that appears on the mass-produced picks ("It's flat probably because it has to fit in your pocket," Murakata says, handling his own comb and pointing to where it says, "Made in China"), the big epoxy resin/fiberglass fist sculpture is meaty and muscular, and looks ready to be thrown.
"I wanted to capture an embodiment of the spirit of that time," Murakata says. "Of that era when black people were on the world stage and when we made visible our unified desire to say, 'Look, America: You have to walk the walk.'"
