Sonia Rao in The Washington Post:
Three years ago, RaMell Ross shipped himself in a wooden crate from Rhode Island to Alabama. The artist and director, who stands well over 6 feet, crammed his towering frame into the box and spent 59 hours in transit.
Ross seeks to understand others by immersing himself in their lives. The crate journey was inspired by Henry “Box” Brown, who escaped enslavement in 1849 by mailing himself from Virginia to abolitionists in Philadelphia. Ross was physically safe in the structure and able to breathe, but the situation was precarious enough for him to taste the terror of Brown’s experience. He has subsequently shown the grim conveyance — its inner walls displaying scrawled definitions he refers to as “Black Dictionary (aka RaMell’s Dictionary)” — in museums as an installation titled “Return to Origin.”
More here.
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