MO
|
ARTISTS
PULL NO PUNCHES, WASTE NO WOR DS How St. Louis duo WORK /PL AY humbly channels greatness. by EILEEN G’SELL / Photography by ATTILIO D’AGOSTINO
“THERE ARE NO TROPHIES FOR RESISTANCE” reads an all-cap tower of stenciled text, “ONLY OPEN REBUKE.” The font is serifed, the words are black and “RESISTANCE” is split into its Webster syllables upon a hanging black banner. Against a white gallery wall of painted brick, the piece neighbors two black-andwhite photographs of Tommie Smith and John Carlos issuing a Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics, one overlaid with the caption “BLACKSKINNED STORMTROOPERS.” A framed Colin Kaepernick jersey glows a lone scarlet from the adjacent wall. Called “When Stars Align,” the mixed-media installation created by Danielle and Kevin McCoy—of the St. Louis creative duo WORK/PLAY—renders the abstract imperative #Resist vividly tactile, textual and multivalent. “A lot of our work intends to spark dialogue,” explains Danielle McCoy from her husband’s graduate studio space at Washington University in St. Louis. “If you just walk in and say, ‘That’s cool,’ the work has no feeling. Art is supposed to be up for interpretation.”
[ 2 0 ]
A L I V E
M AG A Z I N E
Walking into the studio—part of which doubles as an activity space for their inquisitive 2-year-old daughter—it’s clear that feeling informs everything that WORK/PLAY conceives and designs. “The Mike Brown incident was really hard for us,” Kevin McCoy recounts. “We live in a city that was already racially tense. But then there was this continuous loop of black bodies being brutalized and nobody cared. It was a point of reflection: ‘Why are we making comfortable work? We are not comfortable.’ So we have to pass the buck. We have to make other people uncomfortable to get them to think critically.” With a practice that values provocation over art-world laurels, WORK/PLAY has been steadily building a reputation for mingling experimental print-making with design, illustration and textile work. However, if making their audience uncomfortable is a conscious goal, the pair couldn’t seem more comfortable with each other—corroborating the 10-plus years of their creative and romantic partnership. The two met in
