Stefana McClure

Protest Jackets

Protest Jackets navigates the relationship between art and politics and art and language, interrogating the nature of artistic responsibility, the clash and blend of different traditions, the endless interaction, for better or worse, of past and present, the dangerous undercurrents of injustice and resentment, complacency and discontent, while also pointing to memory as mutable, prone to the passage of time and the vagaries of the imagination. Eight small jackets are hung low on pegs, their pockets groaning under the weight of the hefty poetry-wrapped stones that they accommodate. The text of a single “troubles” poem is divided between the two stones, one for each pocket, ready to be thrown. The words of the poems gain literal weight and even the anticipation of action and violence from their supports. As Seamus Heaney put it, the work strives to “grant the religious intensity of the violence its deplorable authenticity and complexity.”

Josée Bienvenu Gallery website
Bartha Contemporary website
Stefana McClure Protest Poems