We've Been Watching 400 Years | Pamela Sneed

A writer of poetry and prose, a long-time activist and educator, and a visual and performing artist, Sneed’s exhibition combines portraiture and abstraction to create an installation in which the artist communes with living amongst the dead.

We’ve Been Watching 400 Years is derived from a recent poem in which Sneed confronts a global pandemic of racial violence. Provoked by the murder of Tyre Nichols and the subsequent release of video documenting five Memphis police beating him so badly he would succumb to the injuries three days later, the poem is distinct from much of her past writing that utilizes elements of prose and storytelling, contains as much levity as it does pathos, and often speaks from lived experience. Instead, this poem is brutal. A swift and terse forty-three lines, many of which are no more than a single word, We’ve Been Watching 400 Years begins with the choice of whether or not to watch the Memphis footage, or from elsewhere along the Mississippi, or Seine, or Nile, only for the reader to realize that no choice exists. The violence always has a witness.  

GALLERY HOURS
Thursday - Saturday 12-6pm

Image:  Pamela Sneed, For Tyre Nichols #2, 2023