In Reckless Eyeballing'Piper examines the dialectics of the gaze whereby conflicted meanings are projected onto the black male body as seen as a scapegoat whose own salvation is left in abeyance. As he says:" The referencing of Biblical texts has always been in recognition of the particular range of resonances which Biblical discourse carries within mainstream Christian/Judaic culture in general, and for Adrican/Caribbean sensibilities in particular. The early 'lynched' figure pieces were grounded in notions surrounding the black body as caught between hostile, contradictory and ultimately, desctructive, forces: as that which 'consumes and was consumed.' But after the political certainties of the mid-Eighties, in pieces which sought to respond to the most problematic examples of black male visibility current at the time, like the Central Park rape, I tried to grapple with issues of condemnation/redemption by using crucifix imagery to examine issues of internatlised or externalised, or collective and individual guilt."
Reckless Eyeballing installation
