In the time honored spirit of the answer song, the mixed-media art exhibition “Thug” was organized to converse with a past exhibit called “Fiber,” a deep dive into black femininity. “Thug” organizers wanted to give black male artists from diverse backgrounds an opportunity explore the range and role of masculinity in black culture. Curator and photographer Ziggy Mack says The Collective’s exhibit showcases experience.
“It looks at black masculinity and how society views it,” Mack says. “And it also looks at sexuality within black masculinity.
“In black culture you see this kind of appropriation happen multiple times,” Mack says, setting up context for the show’s title. “Post-slavery as a people we’d taken the word boy and turned it on its head substituting the word man. Like, ‘Hey man! How you doing my man!’ That was a response to black men being called boy. And there’s the N-word, a more controversial word. But another word we appropriated like taking lemons and making lemonade.”
Thug, a similar appropriation, was re-appropriated in white culture where it’s become a deracialized stand in for less socially permissible slurs.
“The collective and I used it because we thought it would make people ask, ‘What’s this about?” Mack says. “And we used it to turn it on its head again. To turn it into something else. To build a body of art around the word and black masculinity.”
