Shamon Ford

Lives and works in Southfield, MI

Artist statement

the blakc man is an ongoing visual language, not a series of portraits the blakc man is a minimal, continuous mark — deliberately reduced, unnamed by feature or expression — built to exist in the present tense rather than perform for the viewer the blakc man does not tell a story the blakc man is recorded in a condition, and the condition is the whole statement These works operate across three axes: domain, where the blakc man exists condition, how the blakc man exists and number, that the blakc man exists — a sequence confirming the same continuous entity without narrative the blakc man in water places the blakc man inside a field that resists and supports at once the blakc man in light places the blakc man inside exposure itself, nothing to hide behind the blakc man in crowd places the blakc man inside proximity, pressed from every side the blakc man in reflection turns inward, presence meeting itself the blakc man enduring holds pressure without resolving it the blakc man observing turns attention back outward, watching rather than being watched The misspelling of "blakc" is deliberate: close enough to reference Black identity, different enough to resist the stereotypes historically collapsed onto that word. The lowercase title, the present tense, the absence of face or setting are structural, not stylistic, letting the blakc man exist on the blakc man's own terms rather than the viewer's Together, these works ask what a single, continuous identity looks like when...

Artwork