Scorched Earth

The layers in Scorched Earth create a topography that represents the deep psychological and physical ruins of a disappeared people and another time and place. In this work, Mark Bradford depicts an aerial map of an area that has been blacked out. The blackness of this land mass resonates on many levels: black as in the demographics of this neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at one time called “Black Wall Street,” where many black-owned businesses thrived, until the Tulsa Race Massacre erupted in 1921, violently obliterating this unique area and its history; black, as the title suggests, meaning burnt or scorched; black as in redacted; and black as in nothingness.