Merging national origins and social commentary, the ASU Art Museum’s latest exhibit draws on diverse talent to question the nature of identity.

Friday night kicked off the museum’s fall season, featuring the new exhibition, “The Other Mainstream II,” the second exhibit to come from Scottsdale residents Mikki and Stanley Weithorn’s personal collection.

Heather Lineberry, the museum’s senior curator, said the exhibit examines the way cultures blend and affect each other.

“[The Weithorns] like work that has a lot of social and political context,” she said. “I think all of this work explores issues of identity.”

Lineberry pointed out the work “ca3#10, down-ass emperor Qianlong” by Iona Rozeal Brown as an example of the eccentricities this theme can create.

In the painting, the Japanese emperor sits with one Nike sneaker on a boom box, a gleaming pendent around his neck and cornrow-braided hair.

The piece depicts the subculture known as “Ganguro,” or blackface culture, that emerged in Japan during the turn of the century, which draws on elements of traditional Japanese culture and African American hip-hop.

Jacqueline Tarry and Bradley McCallum, the featured artists at the exhibit, positioned themselves in front of their work during Friday’s reception, eager to answer questions and listen to audience reactions.

Tarry and McCallum, married in 1999, said they used their status as an interracial couple to guide their artistic inclinations — exploring the way society perceives and interprets race.

“Bloodlines,” installed on site at the art museum, used evocative civil rights photos behind silk scrim, painted with the same image, to produce a ghostly, almost three-dimensional effect.

The ornate wallpaper surrounding the photographs was created using electron microscope images of Tarry and McCallum’s combined blood cells.

“[The exhibits] are really talking about a generational reflection on race, family and how we fit together,” McCallum said.

“Bloodlines,” in particular, examines how a bloodline heritage can “taint or color your entire identity,” he said.

While researching a commissioned exhibit about Malcolm X in New York City’s Central Park, the couple discovered the foundations for their current work.

“We discovered these really iconic images of the civil rights movement,” McCallum said.

The other influence, McCallum said, came from the “one-drop rule.”
Used colloquially in the United States, the rule dictated that any person containing any trace of African ancestry is black, regardless of skin color. It formed the basis for legal and social perception of race until the middle of the 20th century.

“It wasn’t your darkness; it was the fact that you had black blood in you,” McCallum said.

Directly in front of the “Bloodlines” wall, a DVD called “Exchange” depicts Tarry and McCallum receiving a blood transfusion from each other, mingling their blood in a literal example of the one-drop rule.

“It’s about history and how that resonates with people,” Tarry said.
“It’s about genetic makeup as well as how [blood] courses through our veins.”

Studio art sophomore Tim Barge came out to see Tarry and McCallum’s work.
“It gives an effect people can relate to,” he said.

The Weithorns, who collected every piece in the exhibit, attended the museum’s reception as well, offering insights on the collection’s context.

“We didn’t start out as collectors,” Mikki Weithorn said. “We were doing things to develop art and have it be part of our home.”

Steven Yazzie, a local artist displaying his work at the exhibit, said the message behind the art was the most important part.

“Mikki and Stan are very conscious collectors,” he said. “They’re big collectors of content, not just what’s going to fit behind the couch.”

Reach the reporter at channing.turner@asu.edu.