In this series there are two bodies of work. The first was created in the post studio space of the desktop computer and essentially printed onto cloth (digitally produced dye sublimation prints on poly poplin – say that ten times fast!). This work can take two forms. The first is of enlarged pixels in the portrait of Sojourner Truth, who looks like she could be either African or Caucasian from the way the pixels play in the portrait. The second is as a tangle of linear scribbles, a la Jackson Pollock, as seen in the gargantuan print Protest (pictured above). It is this second style that is also mirrored in latex paint on large canvases.

Content definitely trumps form in this body of work: not that the form is bad, it’s just heavily borrowed. Pollock never tackled race in his work, only his subconscious and his liver. Wondimu’s work addresses both the language of paint and the language of race and ethnicity, which are often the same. Pollock’s technique is an easy vehicle since his mature work of splattered paint is often described as “skeins” – often mispronounced “skins” rather than with a long A (like Spain) – of paint. As for where those skeins fall on the canvas, or in their digital prints, the colors start to mix, blend, overlap, and intersect. Also, like some studies of racial populations, the skin color in Wondimu’s work often times “keep to their own neighborhoods.”