Created as tribute, DeShawn Dumas’ Ballistic Testimonies presents a memorial to the here and now, addressing some of the perils and complexities of being in contemporary America.

Part of an ongoing series started in 2017, the installation consists of totemic glass paintings riddled by a constellation of bullet holes, created by the brute velocity of .40 caliber bullets fired from a standard issue police sidearm. Recalibrating the objecthood of minimalist sculpture, the works suggest the universal fear of being mortally wounded, staging the obscene jouissance (or ‘enjoyment’ in English) of a materialist and spiritually anemic society.

Intended to be both poetic and potentially polemical, Ballistic Testimonies provides a literal point of reflection for the viewers, regardless of whether they are targets of societal violence or complicit of it.

DeShawn Dumas (b. 1985, Elkhart, IN) is represented by Ethan Cohen Fine Arts (New York, NY). A PhD. candidate in Culture & Theory at the University of California Irvine, he earned his MA/MFA from Pratt Institute; and is currently an AICAD Postgraduate Teaching Fellow at the San Francisco Art Institute. This fall he will be in solo exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. Selected exhibitions include Kravets/Wehby Gallery (New York, NY), Janet Kurnatowski Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts and Culture (Charlotte, NC), and the Dukley Art Center (Kotor, Montenegro).