Mirror Malcolm

Chet Gold is a multidisciplinary artist, born and raised in the Bronx. His primary artistic focus has centered on painting and spoken-word rapping since he was a child. He graduated Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, receiving a BFA in Fine Arts with a focus on Illustration. His current employment as a Security Supervisor at the Museum of Modern Art is framed as a “residency” which allows him to use art, and in particular his art, as a way to love and support himself and others. The work overlays an image of the civil rights activist Malcolm X on a mirrored surface, a material Gold works with often In his own words, the artist uses mirrors to “serve as visual affirmations … The pieces are only activated through the viewer; their visibility completes each piece.” Gold is especially engaged with Black histories in the United States and their diasporic inheritances, including from sites on the African continent, particularly Egypt both historically and today. Malcolm X was a complex political figure who advocated for an international perspective on human rights abuses taking place in the US, specifically against Black Americans. During the last year of his life, Malcolm X spent five months in Africa and the Middle East, building relationships with anti-colonial resistance leaders and the presidents of new nations emerging from colonialism. He was viewed by them as a hero. Gold uses an iconic image of Malcolm X as an overlay on the mirror, encouraging the viewer to understand their own reflections today in relationship to this history--one often not known well by White people and others who have not been directly harmed by anti-Black racism in the US.