Ciaran Short
USA
Ciaran Short is a multimedia artist and activist born and raised in NYC. His work explores New York culture and tackles issues of race and masculinity.
Video
Featured Work
Bone, Muscle, a Wild Vitality
Ciaran Short’s video, Bone, Muscle, a Wild Vitality, produced from a photographic series, subverts the supposed “incomprehensibility” of Black bodies as an act of refusal against fetishization.
Artist Statement
Bone, Muscle, a Wild Vitality is a video piece produced from an original photographic series that takes its name from Joseph Conrad’s racist 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness, and is inspired by Chinua Achebe’s famous critique. The photographic series subverts the supposed “incomprehensibility” of Black bodies as an act of refusal against fetishization. While the individual body parts are indistinguishable, the presence of Black skin is clear. Utilizing high contrast, the body is distorted almost beyond sexualization, as it cannot be placed in the context of the whole figure. However, the suggestion of sexualized Black bodies persists due to the intimate proximity of the camera to the subject’s skin, as well as longstanding stereotypes mystifying blackness in the popular imagination.
Ciaran Short
Biography
Ciaran Short is a multimedia artist and activist born and raised in NYC. His work explores New York culture and tackles issues of race and masculinity. He co-founded All Street, an art collective and protest group utilizing creativity to raise visibility and support social justice movements in NYC. With this group, he organized activations across the city using the creation of art as a focus to build community and make space for open dialogue and healing. The collaborative artworks made during their protests are in the permanent collections of The New-York Historical Society, The Museum of the City of New York, and MOCADA. His writing has been featured in publications such as The Independent, Newsday, and Honeysuckle Magazine. In the Spring of 2022, Ciaran opened an art gallery and multipurpose creative space in the East Village called All Street NYC. He holds a Master’s degree in Media Studies from the New School and is adjunct faculty at NYU Tisch’s IMA undergraduate program.
IG: @all.st.nyc
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