Deconstructing the Fragile Mind

If it were not for a second look, I would have let Fragility, a piece by Samuel Levi Jones in the Unruly Navigations exhibition on view at MoAD, completely pass me by. It is a 70 by 60 inch canvas, entirely covered by a shade of grainy pine-tree green and textured in such a way that it resembles a topographic map. When I first saw it, I was more so staring than looking, seeming to have given up any hope of understanding it the moment I recognized its abstract minimalism. But after learning that what I was staring at was not made with paints nor digital technology, but was actually deconstructed and pulped law and history books pressed onto a canvas, my relationship to the piece changed entirely. Suddenly, my perception of the simple, unassuming things around me that I had often chosen to disregard rather than take a second look at was permanently shifted.

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Samuel Levi Jones is a multidisciplinary artist who explores concepts of power structures within the context of systemic inequities by using historical materials as his artistic medium and reimagining them into something new. Thus, how Fragility derives its complex meaning. Thinking about encyclopedias, textbooks, or educational resources in general, we must consider that most of the authors are white men. By deeming them our academic visionaries, we allow them to dictate our perceptions of what is fact and truth, and, inversely, what is not. The obvious dilemma here is that although some white men have made great contributions to academia, there have also been countless whose academic contributions have perpetuated racist ideologies and broader discriminatory thinking or have failed to acknowledge Black existence altogether. By destroying and reshaping law and history books, Jones is commenting on our susceptibility to misinformation from a colonial perspective and pushing us to criticize, re-consider, and ultimately modify the lens that from which we are taught.

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I have many friends and family with medical backgrounds. Fragility brought to mind our intellectual vulnerability within the medical field. This notion has been highlighted by Jones as well. In some of his other works like Without Consent (2022) and Holding Space (2023), he uses medical textbooks as a part of his medium. Historically, many of these books have concluded that different races have different pain responses, often claiming that Black people report higher pain intensity, and thus encouraging medical professionals to ignore or dismiss Black suffering. The reality of what seems like ridiculous, blatantly racist, and dated rhetoric that would not impact anyone in modern times is reflected in the high maternal mortality rates of Black women. It is reflected in the horrendously common birth horror stories of my Black friends’ mothers, who each have their own traumatic version of their pain being taken lightly by medical professionals and almost dying as a result. The way that we are educated dictates how the world around us functions, and this is true for every academic and professional field. Because of this, our intellectual fragility is not just a minor problem, but it is a fatal issue.

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When I first saw Fragility, I assumed that it would be a complex metaphor for something that I would likely not relate to, but upon further examination, I now see it as a piece everyone can resonate with, as we have all been victims of a colonially-rooted educational system. Fragility asks us to destroy the traditional teachings that we have taken as fact from those who are the most societally privileged, to reshape them into something new, and to ultimately free ourselves from a white-centered frame of thought. Thinking back to my first impression of the work by Samuel Levi Jones, my closed-minded mentality almost made me forego understanding its depth. Upon reflection, I have not only learned to never underestimate art in its many forms, but also to never underestimate my capacity to think outside of a conventional framework. Only by realizing the fragility of our minds can we strengthen them into something unyielding and resilient; and only by reclaiming the power from the systems around us can we begin to break and rebuild them.

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