SUBVERSIONS PART TWO: AS AN ENEMY

January 29 - February 28, 2021 from 6-9pm at CulturalDC’s Source Theatre, 1835 14th St NW

“As An Enemy” is a multichannel video installation showing the corruption of the Baltimore City Police Department. Curated by Teri Henderson in collaboration with Baltimore based writer Brandon Soderberg, “As An Enemy” offers a stark microcosm of so many corrupt police forces across the country. The exhibition creates space for the victims of police brutality by telling the unique story of Black men and women victimized by the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF)—a plainclothes police squad, led by the diabolical Wayne Jenkins, established to maintain the racist legacy of “law and order” in Baltimore City, following the 2015 murder of Freddie Gray. In response to Gray’s murder—during which Baltimore Police officers broke his spine and crushed his throat—the city erupted in weeks of proper protest and righteous outrage. In response to that outrage from citizens, the GTTF terrorized Baltimoreans—stealing money and drugs, while causing violence, terror and death. They often targeted known drug dealers, knowing their cries of injustice would be ignored by the judicial system.

SUBVERSIONS is a collaboration between Baltimore-based curator Teri Henderson and CulturalDC to activate Source Theatre’s windows as a public video screen.

“As we approach a full year without ‘normal’ artistic experiences, it’s crucial that we continue to uplift and empower artists through new platforms of engagement,” said Kristi Maiselman, Executive Director of CulturalDC. “Teri and Brandon are people who drive innovation and awareness in their respective creative mediums. We are so glad to collaborate with them and offer Source Theatre as a space for remembrance and accountability.”

The story of the GTTF is chronicled in “I Got A Monster: The Rise And Fall of America’s Most Corrupt Police Squad” by Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg. The book was a major inspiration for the “As An Enemy.” The exhibition also features footage from a documentary (directed by Kevin Abrams and produced by Alpine Labs) made to accompany the book’s release, as well as three short films featuring police body camera footage from Baltimore City Police Department officers committing federal offenses created with artist Sean McTiernan. “As An Enemy” is meant to be disturbing in its truthfulness. These horrors are fact and not fiction. They are not fantastical or imaginary. The people who were affected by the actions of the GTTF were real men and women of Baltimore, whose lives were irrevocably impacted.

The first part of SUBVERSIONS featured “UNITED IN DEMOCRACY: Polarization is a weapon for the perpetuation of power,” by artist Miguel Braceli. That exhibition, curated by Teri Henderson, opened the door to questions of who gets to be considered an American, what is citizenship, and who gets to call this land home? Part Two follows up by addressing the treatment of Black citizens—descendants of men and women stolen as a part of the transatlantic slave trade hundreds of years ago—who are still the victims of racial violence, ongoing trauma, racial battle fatigue and oppression by the unrelenting and violent nature of white supremacy.

“As An Enemy” takes its title from a line spoken by Marshall “Eddie” Conway, a former leading member of the Black Panther Party, wrongfully convicted for the murder of a police officer and released after forty-four years in prison. For a moment in the exhibition, he explains how police departments evolved from slave catchers following the abolition of slavery. As we enter 2021, “As An Enemy” will run throughout Black History Month, serving as an urgent reminder to the United States government, as well as passersby, that there is a great deal of racial violence that this nation has yet to be fully addressed. Black men and women are disproportionately murdered and harassed by police officers across the country. By highlighting some factual instances of this behavior, “As An Enemy ultimately asks what this new regime of political power will do to adequately atone for the history of state-enacted racial violence, both past and present?

“As An Enemy” is for those extrajudicially murdered by cops. It is for Freddie Gray. It’s for Sandra Bland who died in Henderson’s home state of Texas. It’s for Breonna Taylor. It’s for Korryn Gaines. It's for George Floyd. And it’s for the countless other Black men and Black women who were murdered by police officers over history whose names did not become hashtags.

About Reporter Brandon Soderberg

Brandon Soderberg is a Baltimore-based reporter covering drugs, police, and protest. He is the coauthor of I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad and the co producer of the upcoming documentary based on the book. He is formerly the editor-in-chief of Baltimore City Paper and has written for The Intercept, Vice, The New York Times, and many other publications.

“The shocking body camera and surveillance footage used in the short films was court evidence which I obtained. But it should be available to everyone to see, not just reporters. For me, this project is an exercise in journalism but also in simple transparency—something police in the U.S. are allergic to. This combination of images provides a sense of the immediate concerns about police corruption—heightened by a summer of uprisings against police violence—and its long tail which stretches back decades—and made someone like Eddie Conway a political prisoner.”

About Curator Teri Henderson

Henderson is a curator, co-director of WDLY and staff writer for BmoreArt. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Texas Christian University. She formerly held a curatorial internship at Ghost Gallery in Seattle, Washington. She also previously served as the Art Law Clinic Director for Maryland Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. She was published in the St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture. Her work as co-director of WDLY addresses shrinking the gap between the spaces that contemporary artists of color inhabit and the resources of the power structures of the art world through the curation and artistic production of events. She is also the Gallery Coordinator for Connect+Collect Gallery, which seeks to build relationships with artists and collectors in Baltimore and beyond. In her work as a staff writer for BmoreArt, she highlights the voices of Black, brown, queer and non-traditional artists and creatives. Most recently, Henderson founded Black Collagists, an arts incubator designed to research and collect the work of Black collage artists internationally.