Artworks

Devan Shimoyama

American, b. 1989

Untitled (For Tamir), 2019

Chains, silk flowers, rhinestones, beads, and fabric on swing seats, industrial steel

swingset, mirrored plexi platform, and wood

96 x 82 x 158 in. (243.84 x 208.28 x 401.32 cm)

© Devan Shimoyama, courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta

Tamir Rice was a 12-year-old boy playing by himself on a Cleveland, Ohio, playground when he was killed by a police officer who offered no identification or warning and whose car had barely come to a stop before he jumped out and fired his weapon. Rice died the following day. This incident, in November 2014, and those that happened before and since, have galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement around the world.

These seemingly indefensible acts of injustice, most of which nonetheless go unpunished, have become tragic markers of the times we live in, but for Shimoyama, they are not burdens for the life of Tamir Rice or his family and friends to bear responsibility. His life and his environment were not sites or sources of terror or tragedy. Shimoyama focuses on the light and life that were taken from him and from the world, not the darkness imposed upon him and his world from without.