Essential Worker Unmasked
Editor’s Note: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, “Radical Kinship: Solidarity & Political Belonging,” a March 22nd panel discussion organized by CSGS at NYU and co-sponsored by The Latinx Project, was postponed. In response, we invited one of the panelists, Shellyne Rodriguez, to produce an illustration addressing the event’s proposed themes of solidarity and coalitional politics that have now been adopted by vulnerable, frontline communities around New York City as a means of survival amid the global pandemic.
“Essential Worker Unmasked” by Shellyne Rodriguez (2020)15” x 22”, Color pencil on paper
In the artist’s own words:
“The gravest revelation to emerge from Covid-19 in this city is not a revelation at all. Namely, that essential workers are the poor black, brown & indigenous people who inhabit this city. The first to be displaced and the last to be saved. A grand unmasking during a desperate search for masks.”
Shellyne Rodriguez is a visual artist who works in multiple mediums to depict spaces and subjects engaged in strategies of survival against false hope, a device employed in the service of subjugation. These psychological and emotive inquiries puts the Baroque in contact with a Decoloniality rooted in the traditions of hip hop culture. Her work utilizes text, drawing, painting, found materials, and sculpture to emphasize her ideas. Shellyne graduated with a BFA in Visual & Critical Studies From the School of Visual Arts and an MFA in Fine Art from CUNY Hunter College. She has had her work and projects exhibited at El Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum, New Museum and her work has recently been commissioned by the City of New York for a permanent public sculpture, which will serve as a monument to the people of the Bronx.