TO THE BONETO THE BONE In 2017, I created a sculpture for performance, Façade 1, that resembles a two-foot by six-foot section of New England Colonial clapboard siding. I painted the boards with a one-quart undercoat Sherwin William’s “Nearly Brown” (SW 9093.) I then painted the boards with a one-gallon top-coat of Sherwin William’s “White Core” (HGSW4051.) I sand through the layers of white paint to reveal the brown underneath. The performance will end when no white paint remains. I estimate this will take 200+ hours of work if I work relatively unaided. TO THE BONE uses household paint collected from Sherwin-Williams (whose names echo deeply entrenched racist ideas about color) as layers to be excavated and decolonized. Through performance, I use the simple act of sanding through layers of paint to position color, identity, and home at the border of Interior & Exterior as a site to contemplate erasure and reclamation under white supremacy. When encountering a majority-white public, starting in Pittsburgh (2017), I have enlisted white accomplices to take over the labor of sanding for me in a reversal of Tom Sawyer’s whitewashing the fence, allowing me space to do interpretive work and storying-telling for audience. In space majority-of color publics, people joining me in sanding becomes a more joyous communal activity. In 2018, I was invited to perform TO THE BONE many more times than I was in 2017, but was asked to work on them for shorter durations, leading to higher visibility for the performance, but overall less work completed in removing whiteness from “Façade 1.” In reflection, 2018 seems to have been a performance of virtue signaling leading me to sand for longer durations in each performance in 2019. In 2017, the boards received 20 hours of sanding. Performance History: Performed 25 May 2019 Performed 16 January 2019 Performed 30 November 2018 Performed 26 November 2018 Performed 4 November 2018 Demoed 19 October 2018 – with board 4/12 Performed 20 September 2018 Performed 14 August 2018 Performed 9 June 2018 Performed 10 September 2017 Performed 27 August 2017 Performed 12 August 2017 Performed 24 March 2017 Video by Kenny Borge |  TO THE BONE. North Adams, MA |  TO THE BONE, white accomplices. North Adams, MA |  TO THE BONE, video still. Warren, RI |  TO THE BONE, video still. Warren, RI |  Façade 1, sanding detail. |