Marty Wolins

Iam white and my ancestors and I are colonizers. In 1620, my ancestor was a clergy and civic leader who helmed the Mayflower. How do I reckon with this? In collectives of white colleagues, we have a common goal of re-shaping our conditioned white patterns, including implicit racial bias. I am a product of, and a participant in, white supremacy culture, which teaches us to see and feel others as strangers. And teaches us to be strangers to ourselves. How do we re-shape this, and what do we re-shape this into?

This triptych puts our work into visual form, showing three stages and their themes:

(1) Recognizing white supremacy patterns— individualization, disconnection, dissociation, a blankness at our core from being a stranger to ourselves, sharp edges of defensiveness;

(2) Building a collective—new learning, initial steps towards solidarity, re-affirming our knowing that others are to be treated with dignity, reconnecting with nature;

(3) Re-shaping whiteness without supremacy—greater solidarity, shared leadership, taking turns resting within the collective, fortifying our capacity for right-action, softening edges, heart-centered relationship and accountability. My hope was that this visual form would in turn teach me about re-shaping whiteness without supremacy. I chose the technique of two-color screen printing because this technique has a slow design process and it creates random, and unplanned colors and effects.

The visual form has indeed taught me. One example was how the design process evolved. I carried over the same eleven shapes from the middle panel to the right panel, and arranged nine of them randomly in an open semi-circle. I drew two of the shapes resting in the collective, and drew tendrils of care extending only between those forming the outer circle. The outer circle wasn’t much more than half a circle, so I added more shapes to it. Then I realized that my design choice reflected white supremacy patterns—an over-focus on productivity and usefulness, without valuing a connection to rest and recovery. I redrew, to allow more space between the original nine outer circle shapes, and to connect the outer circle end shapes’ tendrils of care to the two resting in the collective. Then wow! This new allowing of space and connection organically created a heart shape.

I am grateful for the collectives that love me and challenge me to shift.

Whiteness Without Supremacy 2022 32” x 20” Mixed Media NFS