Multidisciplinary artist Jeffrey Meris engages with the relationship between materiality and larger cultural and social phenomena. Working across sculpture, installation, conceptual activations, and drawing, Meris considers ecology, embodiment, and lived experiences, while healing deeply personal and historical wounds. Meris earned an associate's degrees in arts and crafts from the University of the Bahamas (2012), a BFA in sculpture from Temple University (2015), and an MFA in visual arts from Columbia University (2019). Meris has exhibited at François Ghebaly, Prospect NOLA 6, Williams College Museum of Art, MoMA PS1, Amon Carter Museum, Lehmann Maupin, James Cohan Gallery, White Column, Luggage Store Gallery, Halle 14, and the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas.
When I'm Not Strong
By Jeffrey Meris
March 26 – May 10
Reception: March 26
Jeffrey Meris presents drawings from two series — I, Used to Be and Now You See Me, Now You Don’t — that underscore systemic disparities and mischaracterization of Black men in the carceral system. In the exhibition, Meris refers to his own encounter with the police by reproducing and enlarging a police citation that falsely lists his height as 6’7” and weight as 250 lbs — though he is 6’2” and 185 lbs — highlighting the fact that the system overestimates the physical size of Black men. He combines works on roofing paper with video documentation of The Block Is Hot, a performance responding to the police citation. Meris’s work interrogates racialized threat perceptions, mistaken identity, and surveillance that sustain the carceral system.