Teri Knox (she, her)
IG: @theknoxstar
Perceived Value and Representation, includes two works "If Only..." July 2020, a portrait in wood, spray paint and gold leaf and "Mixed Pride" March 2021, a poem recited via video
I was inspired to make the video to extend the concept of a self-portrait. The video is an imperfect look at who I am now and a bit of a love note to Sacramento, CA. I am thankful for the incentive to try new-to-me things and to represent for the mixed peoples in the world.
The people who show up in life deserve to be rewarded. And so I offer a gathering of works under the title of “Perceived Value and Representation.” Made from upcycled scraps as well as fresh materials put together with older works and new ones. I will tell folks that every time we apply our touch to industrial pieces, they gain value. Stain, paint, the effects of gilding scraps in action and affect.
When I came out I had a restricted idea of who else might be of the life because I had not seen for myself. Now, I appreciate the idea of representation as a mixed/queer human in this world. Period. Not just reaffirming and offering vulnerability within my community to my people but to be open to the world at large. To offer a greater opportunity to expose my view of the world and how I move through it.
I grew up as a kid in the 70’s on the west coast. People in the LA area really liked my look and would press my mom to push me to act or model in print. Even then I realized it was about my exterior, not interior and I did not wish to expose myself to the masses. Then, we moved to DC and I learned to live my politics to the best of my ability - to live out loud. Sci Fi Conventions and Romance wars at Renaissance Faires gave me my base and I grew exponentially with geek pride. These were safe spaces for experimenting with identity. You could be from other planets, other times… you could be otherwise than life’s mundane expectations. I was taught to love the things I love regardless of greater society’s opinions. In the meantime, I took my poetry the show on the road performing at College campus, sidewalks and open mike’s on a two month poetry tour around the perimeter of the USA and into Canada. I worked in theater as a props assistant and as events staff. Became a welder on Long Island in a 3rd generation shop and if you got the owner drunk he would tell you I worked hard as any man. A medievalist with the SCA comes full circle, I started doing blacksmith work while getting my welding degree at ARC. Keep doing, keep trying, keep striving to be your authentic self.
Teri Knox
Teri Knox, If Only... July 2020, portrait in wood, spray paint and gold leaf
Teri Knox, Mixed Pride, March 2021, a poem recited via video
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Pride in Mixed Pride – A Reflection . . . , by Kathy Jamieson, Professor, Sacramento State
In the poem, Mixed Pride and the self-portrait, If Only, artist Teri Knox invites a vision of all kinds of “mixing” as beauty, strength, potential, and legacy. The work is especially powerful as it is intentionally set in spaces where artist and community may experience “mixed” encounters with representation, risk, love, loss, and home . . .lessness. For me, Mixed Pride and If Only re-open and heal a wound that comes with my own mixed way of being in the world, including an academic career of navigating invitations to be the “just-Brown-enough” scholar/colleague/educator. In her refusal to “locate” herself, Knox imparts power to each of us to name ourselves, to see our full selves, to be our selves. The work powerfully intervenes in the ways that Whiteness and Whitened imaginations cultivate a longing for binary and/or clarified states of identity. Mixed Pride represents an intentional encounter with difference- one’s own and that which enriches communities . . .if we would only become attune to it. Beyond the carefully selected words, the ambient noise in Mixed Pride may be heard as both the sounds of promising co-existence, as well as a reminder of the systemic cacophony of rhetoric around diversity, all-too-often absent of real action for real change. Through intentional use of oppressor language, Knox demands to be seen, in the ugliness of Colonial legacies as well as in the glowing beauty of a thriving mixed way of being. While the subject of Mixed Pride and If Only is worthy of ongoing consideration and multiple encounters, the materiality of the artist’s manner of creating art is equally provocative. In this moment of pandemic Zo/o/mbie-ism, Knox dives into digital media without losing the feeling of encounter that so clearly matters in her work. She takes us on a walk through a part of Sacramento that is simultaneously erased and reanimated by the whims of capital, and . . . Capitol. As she moves through this space, Knox lyrically paints images of the local and regional subject positions that get thrust upon any of us who’s reflection does not fit the Colonialist, binary manner of identification. All at once Knox, not only offers us provocative words, but also walks with and through all of this inherited history, offering a feeling of promise, or as Dionne Brand recently pushed us to imagine . . . an “emergence” from a past that will always be present as we wrestle ourselves and our communities from its grip. Reminiscent of the work of Nikki Giovanni and June Jordan, Knox centers a simplicity of one’s self-knowledge within a potent demand for seeing the full context, risk, and beauty of queer, racialized life in Colonialist cityscapes. I am moved by this work, “how ‘bout you?”
Brand, D. (2021, March 11). What we saw. What we made. When we emerge. Kitty Lund Memorial Lecture. York University, Canada.