Geraldine Ondrizek: Shades of White

Geraldine Ondrizek, an artist and professor at Reed College, creates installations that explore personal and political issues related to genetics, ethnic identity, and disease. For the JSMA, the artist will create a site-specific installation of light boxes and hand-dyed silk panels that represent the "Gates Skin Color Charts,” a tool used by eugenicists in the mid-20th century to chart race by color gradation, from “African” to “Caucasian.” The installation is based on the research of medical scholar Alexandra Minna Stern of the University of Michigan, who investigates the history of eugenics and its attendant genetic and racial discrimination as practiced in Oregon, and the United States more broadly, from 1900 to1987.