Sarah Whyte: What Color Am I?
Sarah Whyte poses a deceptively complex question about who she is, and just as importantly, how others might see her.
Red, white and blue. Or yellow.
Not quite the primary colors but enough to address the larger geopolitical context referring to pigmentation of skin as identity and identification of her adopted self.
Through painted unstretched canvas and embroidered fabrics, she employs a linguistic approach to color that suggests a kind of cultural synesthesia. Words written as and in place of actual color by an artist of color calling into question the popular notion of color.
The term, if not the concept of, “color” itself then becomes a system of representation beyond the formal vocabulary of light, hues, and tones associated with perception to provoke many meanings, different interpretations connoting allegiances and belonging.