DREAMS DEFERRED

HARLEM

by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore-

and then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over-

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

IMAGO DEI by Joshua Dease.

A friend of mine invited me to contribute a piece for a black history art show called Dreams Deferred, inspired by Hughes’ poem Harlem. I was a little nervous, you know, being a white dude and all. But she and her co-curator had looked at my work and felt I would be able to do it.

The poem uses some gross metaphors. It’s not pretty. It is brutal. The dream is hurt, crushed, and reformed… but it never ceases to exist. The dream deferred is a dream persistent. Looking at black history, which I have been for the last two years, you see this persistence. And it is not pretty. It is brutal. You see incredible leaders such as Bishop Richard Allen in his later years start to wonder if maybe it would be better for African Americans to make their way back to Africa and start a colony of their own (a popular debate in the 1820s-40s among African American leaders who were already tired and worn from the struggle for emancipation at that point). Seemingly indestructible figures like Frederick Douglass -who saw emancipation accomplished only to be followed by the brutal rise of lynchings at the mere thought of black citizenship- at the end of their lives knew they wouldn’t see the fruit of their long labors, and wondered if fruit would ever come.

As I thought about this centuries old struggle, which has not been my struggle, I made this art. It is very simplistic. A clear message.

Over the last two years, I have been playing around with drawing regular folks, maybe even sketchy folks, as Church iconography. The process by which the Roman Catholic Church recognizes formal Saints is both fascinating and mysterious to me. It always happens after the figure is dead. Sometimes long after. There’s a quote by Dorothy Day, “Don’t call me a saint, I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.”

I think it is a tragedy of life that we often fail to recognize or honor the humanity of others until it is too late. I think about the legacy of Trayvon Martin (1995-2012) and I cannot help but wonder if he would ever have had a small fraction of the community love + support he has now, as a symbol, if he had lived as a person. And I wonder, in a more useful + necessary way, if I am the kind of person willing to give this community love + support to kids like Trayvon. Because if not, I believe that means I am complicit in deferring the dream. Prolonging the struggle. Inspiring the brutality of the metaphors.

So that is what this artwork is about. The sacredness of the normal. The sacredness of the other. The sacredness of the enemy. The sacredness of however you see the people I have depicted here.

May we have eyes to see + ears to hear one another as neighbors + fellow travelers. May we recognize one another as brothers + sisters when it is day, and not only after the night has come.

Peace + Love,

-joshua.