Otherly Presents Pink, Purple, Polka-Dotted
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For Portland Textile Month, we're thrilled to share the work of artist and designer Julia Bond with our downtown Portland neighborhood. Julia not only created a multi-media space that's beautiful and immersive, but she brought a powerful message that challenges racial ideologies.
Through her platform, Otherly, Julia "seeks to celebrate the vastness of Blackness, while critiquing the very unhelpful ways in which we categorize it." Using color, fashion, dance and videography, she creates other-worldy installations in which the viewer is struck by the odd proportions of her apparel designs, while at the same time is mesmerized by playful colors, textures, and sounds.
A giant-sized puffer jacket on display in this show. Created by Julia Bond. Photo courtesy Julia Bond.
In this show, Pink, Purple, Polka-Dotted, Julia challenges the idea that you can justify being color-blind to race. When you say “It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, red, yellow, pink, purple, or polka dotted,” it actually means this:
“I refuse to deal with how our culture and society treats people of color because it makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want to understand how having a different skin color or ethnicity affects other people because that means I would have to think and consider other points of view. What I want is to not have to think. I prefer to believe I live in a fantasy land where no one ever pays attention to skin color, ethnicity, culture, or religion.” (Source: stuffwhitepeopledo.com)
