Mississippi
August 29, 2017
In Robert Indiana’s piece ‘Mississippi’, it reads “Just as the anatomy of man, every nation must have its hind part”. Thinking of America as a living, breathing body with all of its parts including a head, heart, a hind part is the entry point to this piece. It allows the viewer to ask many questions surrounding politics, identity, and the human condition in regards to our country. If we’re looking at this place in regard to the body, is it possible our country has a soul? If so, what does America’s soul and spirit look like in relation to its hind parts?
Indiana, who is a renowned American artist most famous for his work in the Pop Art movement, has a career of work that has a wide reach, speaking about topics such as love, to other existential themes such as comparing the words “eat” and “die”. He works complex concepts into deceivingly simple designs.
In ‘Mississippi’, Indiana reveals the state as the hind part of the country in 1971, as the country had just gone through the Civil Rights Movement. Mississippi, a part of America’s Black Belt region, named that because of the fertile soil used for growing cotton and the slaves there to pick it, was a very dangerous place for African Americans during, before, and after the Civil Rights movement. That state facilitated horrors such as the murder of Emmitt Till at age 15, to hosting a chapter of the Klu Klux Klan with over 6,000 members in the 1960’s, and the Civil Rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama as African Americans protested for the right to vote and were met with tear gas and state troopers with billy clubs.
It reflects on a traumatic time in the country, just as the U.S. is experiencing now with recent events such as the recent Alt-Right attacks in Commonwealth, VA and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s travel advisory for Missouri. The piece ‘Mississippi’ is as relevant now as it has ever been in this country.
Text by Emily Lane Borden