January - March 1994

Installation View

Icon Malcolm will be on t-shirts made and sold by the same people who profited from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles craze. Black teens with less job prospects than 20 years ago will wear the shirts, identifying more with the dead hero than with living people carrying on the struggle today. Everyone will be able to take a piece of the myth and make it their own.

Malcolm X becomes the man who saw through the hatred of white society, renounced violence, and found his final solace in religion. Malcolm X, a radical who finally decided it was better to work within the system only to be murdered, not by the forces of repression, but by other black people. Law enforcement boasts that it will deal with drug offenders "by any means necessary." Now that America has agreed on the "all American" image of Malcolm X, it is not surprising that they are not at all afraid of this person.