David- Jeremiah is a self-taught multi-disciplinary artist from Oak Cliff, Dallas. He examines the violent past and present that Black bodies have endured, particularly within America. His conceptual artworks are made from a mix of paintings, inverted performance installations, sculpture, and mixed media. Jeremiah’s work heralds an urgency to address systemic racism and the institutions that upholds it. It also extends beyond those grounds to consider more significant questions about the human condition and identity through his investigations into what he describes as ritualistic violence.
A Watermelon’s History In Niggas
It seems like a lot of anti-critical race theory folks steady pull the lazy tactic of leveraging the “ideal”. Essentially the same play utilized by the: “No…All Lives Matter” retort to the Black Lives Matter assertion. Traveling into the future, capturing and weaponizing the ideal, only to bring it back to the present and dead everything.
Competition is nature. And how much we debase it has turned into one of many endless competitions within itself. When someone brings up a generalization during a conversation within a specific moment of context that communicates precisely what the solution needs, the homie on the other end points out an exception. And of course vice versa. Some conversations have so much energy built up from being had for so long that they’re past us, and can be had themselves. But, proven by how we repeatedly stay in the way, we’re not past them. Before my granny would beat that ass for doing something I wasn’t supposed to for the 3rd or 4th time she would always say: “If you like it, I love it.” Competition.
I wanted to compete with the unrealities, realities, and overall cap of the nuance-free proclamation that the Black condition in America is solely its own fault. Why not create a world where niggas play the role of the white man, and inside a nigga’s stomach, the internalized white system has been stolen from whites and incorporated to oppress Watermelons? Why not do what you do to me better to Watermelons? Why not be you better than you? Because if you like it, I very much so love it.