Patrick Hammie's Artist Talk

There was a weird moment. And. “Black Lives Matter.”

Patrick Hammie’s presentation started very abruptly. It felt as if he was trying to begin in the least politically triggering way, however one cannot talk about politics without being political. And that’s exactly how it felt to view and hear him talk about his art; it was as if he was beating around the bushes. Hammie states, “art informs the world” which inherently means it forces you to think and conceptualize the information you are receiving. But, there was still what felt like a strategic choosing of language throughout his presentation to prevent the harming of emotions.

An idea he mentioned a lot was “my place in space” and how it relates to how we understand and learn to think about people and their bodies.

There is a burden on the body. No one is actually born with a clean slate; from the moment you enter society there are assumptions made about you. A common example of this is the stereotype enforced unto black bodies, specifically the bodies of little black boys. Far before they have fully conceived of the world they are apart of they are told that they are going to become a criminal, another hopeless delinquent. "We impose the form of the old on the content of the new” (McLuhan 86). But as Hammie states and demonstrates in his work, change happens in three ways: time, hard work and consciously rejecting. In Significant Other, he consciously rejects old ideologies being forced on new bodies. He intentionally captures this idea of “active performity and macho performance”  through the switching of gender roles and performance of strength. Though this body of work allows you to become critical of gender and performance, there is still this feeling of the old being imposed on the new.