American Hunger
The Allegory of Absurd Re-Construction 2016

Zero Bey, former Hip Hop rapper, US Army veteran of two foreign wars, and peace and justice educator presents a body of explosive paintings that deconstruct American racial narratives. Suggested through his title, borrowed from the second installment of writer Richard Wright’s landmark autobiography in 1942, Bey argues for a close inspection of tropes that have remained lodged in the American psyche. His paintings confidently reinterpret classic, ubiquitous Blaxploitation images of the 1970s, Black Nationalist, African and American aesthetics and the current chaotic social protest mix of our period. In the artist’s words, the exhibit is “a visual narrative of how we are not free. This exhibit pokes satirical fun at the culture we have all embraced most often uncritically yet, an American culture which thrives on absurdity, estrangement and shallow values (read: SEXISM/RACISM/CAPITALISM).”