bid on salt https://www.alotofsalt.com/
virtual gallery talk
March 15th 10:30am central time, 2021
salt still is an exhibition that looks at the speculative character of capital, inevitably leading to its uneven distribution. This speculative nature is also called the ‘efficient allocation of resources’ — most evident in the racialized reality of wealth and wages. This distribution system is so effective that it always allocates resources to whiteness and deficits Blackness — Black being an original source of the capital. So historically, the endowment that first seeded the capitalist project was collected from Black bodies and worlds. And contemporarily, the capital that speculates in order to generate more capital does so by exploiting Black bodies and worlds.
In the United States, white households have 10x more wealth than Black households. While in Wisconsin, the racial wage disparity is 107%. These disparities exist as a consequence of global capitalist white supremacy evolving through the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, jim crow, neocolonialism, and other active histories of anti-black racism.
Any possibilities of progress under this racial wealth order always fail, because all attempts at usurpation are capitalist. So the game doesn’t stop, especially not when we attempt to stop the game by trying to game the system using its own logic. Progress is still, and exploitation marches. Progress is salt, it’s sorrow. And sorrow never moves, while capital is liquid and it always flows.
Historically, salt has been used as a commodity of exchange, of leverage, of collateral, instigated by a nefarious idea of global trade that justified racial hierarchies to the benefit of the West. This idea of trade created and enabled colonization and imperial modes of oppression that have re-inscribed the histories and inflected the futures of Black worlds. Black worlds being the colloquial Black peoples as well as the Blackened peoples; the browns, yellows, reds, rainbows and the forcibly bowed. Black worlds being everyone who stands still against this movement of capital. Yet Black is backward because we refuse. We are the ‘third world’ or ‘developing world’ used as gateways of wealth, labor exploitation, and accumulation, leading to the possibility of the so-called ‘first world’ nations.
The exhibition title addresses the only constant — the ever-increasing racial wealth disparity and the failed efforts in effectively creating reparations for Black worlds. By locating the dire and specific inequalities present in the capitalist modes of resource distribution, artists Tunde Wey and Vasudhaa Narayanan show our collective stillness in the face of capital. They ask, “when will the games stop?” Their question itself is presented in a game of speculation around boxes of salt as commodities. By mimicking the features of speculation and escalating the stakes towards absurdity, the ultimate futility of economic reform is laid bare. The final destination of this critique is...
Tunde Wey is a writer and cook living between New Orleans, USA, and Lagos, Nigeria.
Vasudhaa Narayanan (b. 1991, Bangalore, India) lives and works between San Francisco, USA & Bangalore, India. She is an artist, curator, and educator - her work explores the complexities of identity, domesticity, and gender within the South Asian diaspora. She is currently a visiting faculty at Karnavati University, Ahmedabad. Narayanan is the co-founder of JAGAH Collective - their goal is to encourage artists to reveal and uncover complex narratives rooted in South Asia.
She has exhibited internationally at venues such as Southern Exposure (San Francisco, CA), Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts - Project Space (New York, NY); the Goethe Institut (India); and recently throughout San Francisco including Bass and Reiner (San Francisco, CA).