Adjunct Faculty Spotlight Part 2 > Adriana Warner

Adriana Warner
Adriana Warner
Untitled triptych (detail), 2020 Acrylic & oil pastel on paper

Adriana Warner

Statement

With a keen interest in letterforms and language, I use my work to articulate the realities of my existence as a Black American living in a country and under a system that continues to thrive on the oppression of non-white, particularly Black and Indigenous people. “Systems of oppression are durable and reinvent themselves” and so, I find it appropriate to call out and challenge these systems, giving special attention to harmful hypocrisies and the deadly consequences of such.

In this piece, I explore ideas around clarity and accessibility as it relates to messaging about history and propaganda. Pulling from Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech ‘What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July’, this work is a direct response to the 2020 uprising following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others.

“If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, ‘may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!’”
—Frederick Douglass