Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT 2026
April 26 – July 5, 2026
Amy Yoshitsu, Jacob Cullers, Jayden Ashley, and Ode
Photo credit: Peter Brown
why and why and why
should i call a white man brother?
who is the human in this place
the thing that is dragged or the dragger?
–Lucille Clifton, jasper texas 1998
The title of this exhibit is adapted from Lucille Clifton’s searing poem, jasper texas 1998.* Clifton gives voice to James Byrd in this poem highlighting the horrendous act perpetrated on a black man by white people. Clifton’s powerful condemnation and poetic rendering of Byrd’s humanity grounds the visual work presented in where is the human in this place. This exhibit opens a discussion around the structures and systems that continue and reinforce racism and other inequities deeply wound within societies.
In where is the human in this place, artists Amy Yoshitsu, Jacob Cullers, Jayden Ashley and Ode Hilaire explore the infrastructures that perpetrate daily violences and inequities against people who differ from the dominant culture, including people of color, poor, and trans people. Their works explore the invisible bureaucracies, policies, and manipulations that enable and reinforce a system of extended and pervasive inequities and violences against people via the tax system, zoning law and redlining, the culture of white male supremacy, and the impact of capitalism on Travesti in Brazil.
Amy Yoshitsu focuses on deconstructing the interconnections between power, economics, labor, and race. Return and Schedule Self-Interest derives from Yoshitu’s own experience and examines how the tax system “perpetuates the black and white ‘logic’ and poles of our society.” Yoshitu notes that the 1040 tax form that workers in America are required to file has built in prejudices that reinforce long-standing hierarchies. The tax system penalises some tax payers, usually those who are poor and disenfranchised, whilst favoring others, for example home owners and the wealthy. Yoshitu’s eleven fabric panels use the 1040 and its schedules to create a 5 foot tall hanging installation. Viewers can stand between these stitched sheets to experience the oppression of the tax system directly. This confined space also alludes to Yoshitu’s racialised location in the U.S. as a Japanese American.
Jayden Ashley explores zoning laws relating to redlining to highlight how institutional policies and structures are a source of sustained and continued systemic violence against Black communities. Red lining is a policy tool embedded in zoning laws and financial practice that constrains black people in disinvested locations rife with environmental and other issues. Using legislative and cartographic sources, Ashley researched redlined geographies in New York and New Haven creating sculptures from concrete and chalk wall drawings that echo the erasures of Black people and their communities, channel absences as a result of these enactments, and questions borders. The repeated abstract forms that show the actual redlined geographies encompass real lives and communities reminding us of the repetition of violence and inequity and its embeddedness within the infrastructures of the everyday. The hardness of the concrete emphasizes the destructive force of these often invisible systems.
In The Man, Jacob Cullers unapologetically highlights the violence of the white male hierarchical power structures in the U.S. In this work, the “Man” is a grotesque abstraction that disgorges intestines from its mouth. On the left, a mask resembling those worn by the Klu Klux Klan receives the intestine signaling the white male supremacy that is embedded within the system. In the background, the monumental faces of the Mount Rushmore Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson locate the viewer squarely within the American political system. The layering of images in this painting is reflected in the prints 8.11.17 and 8.12.17 which further Cullers’ engagement with themes of systemic violence by white men. These works are based on the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. In 8.11.17, we see white male marchers and their tiki torches, whilst in 8.12.17, the next day, blurry shots on a field of camouflage allude to the tragic killing and injury of counter protestors by a professed neo-nazi who deliberately drove his car into the crowd. In these works, the surface symbolizes historical and present day violence largely perpetrated by white American men.
In her video, Travecacceleration, Ode examines how the logic of cisgender capitalism impacts trans people, specifically travesti in Brazil. According to Ode, the video shows how the “cisheteropatriarcal…puts black people and, overall, travestis in a position that does not allow us to claim our own images, enunciations, and epistemologies.” Through video montage, she reinforces how black people and travesti are defined within the system and how they are specifically absent from rapid growth in capitalism and its underpinnings including technology. Travecacceleration emphasizes that within the cracks of the system travesti can take action turning the lack of inclusion into liberation by claiming ground as their own capital.
The works in where is the human in this place respond to questions of humanity and as echoed in Clifton’s poem the lack of it. They show the invisible and visible systems and structures that deliberately exclude, perpetuate violence, and impact vulnerable people’s lives with tragic certitude. The exhibition will be on view from Sunday, April 26 through Sunday, July 5. Please join us for the opening on Sunday, April 26, 1-4pm.
* Written for James Byrd, Jr. who was gruesomely lynched in Texas on June 7, 1998, the original line from the poem is “who is the human in this place.”