Threshold

1 : the plank, stone, or piece of timber that lies under a door : SILL

2a : GATE, DOOR

  b(1) : END: , BOUNDARY specifically : the end of a runway

    (2) : the place or point of entering or beginning : OUTSET

// on the threshold of a new age

3a : the point at which a physiological or psychological effect begins to be produced

// has a high threshold for pain

  b : a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not.


-- Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online

Ashley Ortiz-Diaz

This exhibition is a continuation of works based on the study of Zion Cemetery in Tampa, Florida. The works of and on paper use abstraction to acknowledge the historical Black cemetery that was found underneath a public housing complex, and the many other ways Black people are disappeared.

For more details on Zion Cemetery, follow this link.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the uprising against police brutality in the Summer of 2020 have made clear how the vanishing of Black people happens at multiple points: in history, and the ways we remember it, in life, and the breath we are allowed, and in minds and the trauma we inherit. Because of this, our nation is that of hollowed-out landscapes where even at rest, Black people have not been allowed to exist. The work aims to take a painful story, and lay it down with soft hands.

What can we tolerate? What are the points of tension that might soon break us?

The work in this installation was created with charcoal, paper, water, ink, and mylar.


See more of Ashley’s work at http://www.ashleyortizdiaz.com/