Oath of dishonor
“Oath of dishonor” depicts the Law Enforcement Oath of Honor, spelled out by the names of people of color who have fallen victim to police brutality in the United States.
The idea for this piece came to me while watching a documentary about the trial of the NYPD officers who shot and killed Amadou Diallo back in 1999. The story was brutally familiar. Back then it was Amadou; this week it was Breonna. How many victims had there been? How many officers had solemnly sworn to serve and protect, but still pulled the trigger on innocent lives? I wanted to see what it would look like if someone put those two - the vow and the victims; the words vs the actions - together.
Little did I know, as I started working on this image, that we were mere days away from the entire world erupting in outrage over the murder of George Floyd. I spent those riotous summer weeks of 2020 reading up about what had happened to the people whose names we know so well - Michael Brown, Atatiana Jefferson, Eric Garner, and hundreds more. I pressed ‘play’ on police cam videos I can’t unsee. At the end of the summer, I re-emerged with a nagging feeling that I had barely scratched the surface, and this protest piece.
“Oath of Dishonor” was featured in the Black Lives Matter exhibition (spring 2021) of the Matigan Art And Cultural Center, Berlin.
