Chadd Scott, Contributor | Forbes.com
b. Robert Moore, ‘Without A Shadow of Doubt (Daddy’s Boy),’ 2024. 37”x58” Acrylic, charcoal wash on Belgian linen. COURTESY OF “BORG” TOBIAS TYLER.
Artist b. Robert Moore (b. 1983; Des Moines, IA) served in the Army. Just like his father and uncles and a grandfather before him.
He filled a data entry job. Boring.
Moore’s service was given voluntarily. In stark contrast to the Black men and women he sees sacrificing their lives across the country to police murder. He considers them involuntary veterans of the United States of America.
“There's a parallel between a veteran that voluntarily signs up for war versus a civil war (in America) that's evolved and taking different shapes, but really hasn't changed a ton,” Moore told Forbes.com. “My people are still dying. Nothing happens. There's no folded flag. There's no reparations. There's no compensation when we're murdered by people sworn to protect and serve us.”
Like millions of other Americans, Moore’s perspective on race in America received a shocking jolt in 2020. Ahmaud Arbery’s lynching. George Floyd choked to death by cops on the street, caught on camera. Breonna Taylor shot to death by police blasting recklessly into her apartment.
All of this got Moore thinking. Thinking about his service to America. About America’s hostility toward people who look like him. Newly sober after drug and alcohol addition, Moore was seeing his country with fresh, clear eyes.
“Witnessing Ahmad Aubery being lynched and murdered in front of our eyes, that was really hard to shake. Using art as a therapy tool, and also a political tool to protest or get my voice out, I wanted to respond to that,” Moore explains. “I thought about the duality of being a Black man in America and also being a veteran of the United States Army, and coming from a family of those same identities, (it) really forced me to start looking at it through that dual lens of a Black man, and an American.”
The “double consciousness” W.E.B. Du Bois called out and wrestled with more than 100 years ago. Triple consciousness when considering Moore’s service.
“As both a Black American and also a veteran, it is my civil duty to use art as a form of peaceful protest to look at the truth and present my findings in a different light in public space. To provoke thought and encourage reflection of how you may find commonality with the iconography of death,” Moore has written about his artmaking. “Every Black American who is killed at the hands of those sworn to protect is an act of war, it is a continuation of America’s history of systemic racism and prejudice, of imprisonment, slavery and ultimately death. It is a dishonorable act to not properly classify MURDERED Black Americans as involuntary Veterans of a civil war.”
Moore’s “civil duty” takes centerstage at the Des Moines Art Center during a solo exhibition of his newest work on view through October 20, 2024, “Iowa Artists 2024: b. Robert Moore: In Loving Memory.” The artist gives over one gallery of the three-room presentation to the “involuntary veterans,” memorializing them–“In Loving Memory”–through a series of headstones, flags, and an illuminated noose.
“I drove by these (military) grave sites, and these headstones… Arlington Memorial,” Moore recalls. “It stood out to me that the veterans’ headstones were white granite. My response (was) to reinterpret those and fabricate 50, black granite headstones.”
Displayed on a wall behind them are a field of green flags with black stars, an homage to David Hammond’s African American Flag (1990). They are neatly folded into triangular wooden cases, military service memorial style.
Moore presented one to Aubery’s mother in 2020.
Each frame comes with a nameplate of an African American victim of police murder. Tragically, Moore had no shortage of choices when picking names.
“It was a terribly painful exercise. I didn't even know where to start because I could go back forever and there's only public record of so many. I wanted to pick a sample from (different) eras and not necessarily look for only buzzworthy names because all these stories are important and they don't necessarily get the media coverage they deserve,” Moore explained. “I have a couple of recognizable names in there because I knew it would pull people in, but the flag in the center is blank, it has the gold nameplate, but it doesn't have a name because I don't know who's next. I could fill in Sonya Massey most recently, and others.” READ THE FULL STORY, ON FORBES.COM
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