On View
On viewObject number2019.2a-b
Flesh, 1968
Artist
Bethany Collins
(American, 1984-)
Date2017
MediumToner and graphite on American Masters paper
DimensionsOverall: 30 × 44 in. (76.2 × 111.8 cm)
panel 1: 30 × 22 in. (76.2 × 55.9 cm)
panel 2: 30 × 22 in. (76.2 × 55.9 cm)
panel 1: 30 × 22 in. (76.2 × 55.9 cm)
panel 2: 30 × 22 in. (76.2 × 55.9 cm)
Credit LineElisabeth Claire Lahti Fund
Exhibition History"Resilience: African American Artists as Agents of Change," [Travel Version] at the Dennos Museum Center, Traverse City, MI (June 6, 2021 - August, 15, 2021)Label TextBethany Collins’ Flesh, 1968 is part of her Contranyms series. In these works, Collins copies definitions from the Webster’s New World Dictionary of American Language onto American Masters paper, then uses her saliva and an eraser to remove much of the drawing. In Flesh, 1968 she left the definitions, “to clothe with flesh” and “to plunge (a weapon) into flesh,” demonstrating the shifting, and even contradictory meanings of the same word over time. Collins also alludes to flesh as the ability to harm or make tangible, to build or destroy.
This work’s title references “Flesh, 1968,” a film written and directed by Paul Morrissey, about a man who exchanges his body for money. Within this exhibition, the artist’s layered treatment of the word "flesh" invites reflection on the commodification of enslaved people who were legally bought and sold before the Civil War. Collins' Flesh, 1968 encourages consideration of the many ways human bodies have been assigned value in American history—as sites of labor, violence, survival, and exchange. These contradictory definitions of the same word, paired with acts of erasure, ask how language can obscure or expose the histories of freedom, economic exchange, and violence embedded within American society.
[Label Text: For the People: America at 250 Exhibition, June 27 - October 4, 2026]
