Anthony Ramos
2021Decent Men
Anthony Ramos
Decent Men, created over a period of almost forty years, is a video collage built around Ramos' powerful extended monologue on his eighteen months in federal prison for resisting the draft during the Vietnam War. As Ramos, a compelling raconteur, tells the story of his interactions with prisoners and guards as a 23-year-old draft resister, his charged performance narrative is interrupted with vintage cartoons that feature grotesque racial stereotypes. Ramos' stories of prison life are overlaid with footage from the artist's early performances and his 1977 video About Media, which addressed the media's coverage of President Carter's amnesty for draft resisters. The result is an extraordinary first-hand narrative of Ramos' prison experiences within the cultural, racial and political climate of America in the late 1960s.
Decent Men
Water Plastic Bag
Anthony Ramos
Water Plastic Bag is one of a series of durational, risk-taking performances that Ramos made with fellow artists Lowell Darling and Joe Ray. An idyllic shot of beach and surf is the setting for this unnerving performance. Ramos and Darling are tied into body-sized plastic bags and then buried in the sand by shovel-wielding children. As passers-by stroll along the beach and curious dogs investigate, the two men struggle free of the sand and then roll and tumble, still sheathed in their plastic bags, into the crashing surf. Eventually they emerge from the waves and the bags and exit the scene.
Water Plastic Bag
Balloon Nose Blow-Up
Anthony Ramos
With a striking economy of means, Ramos enacts a close-up performance action: he blows up a balloon with his nostril until it bursts in his face. He then repeats the action with his other nostril. Alternating nostrils, he continues to blow up the balloon until it bursts. With each iteration his exhaustion visibly increases; he gasps for breath, almost to the point of passing out.
Balloon Nose Blow-Up
Nor Was This All By Any Means
Anthony Ramos
In this densely layered work, Ramos explores his cultural and personal heritage through a collage of recorded and appropriated footage. Juxtaposing African and American landscapes, personal and media imagery, he traces a spiritual and physical journey that moves from from Harlem to Goree Island, Cape Verde and Tanzania. In a forceful portrait of cultural disenfranchisement that refers to the African diaspora and the bitter harvest sown by slavery, he challenges the veracity of mass cultural images of African-Americans.
Nor Was This All By Any Means
About Media
Anthony Ramos
Ramos' astute deconstruction of television news focuses on the media coverage of President Jimmy Carter's 1977 declaration of amnesty for Vietnam War draft resisters, and his personal involvement with the issue. Ramos, who had served an eighteen-month prison sentence for draft resistence, was interviewed by New York news reporter Gabe Pressman. Using repetition and juxtaposition, he contrasts the unedited interview footage — and patronizing comments of the news crew — with Pressman's final televised news report. In his ironic manipulation of the material, Ramos exposes the illusion and artifice of television news.
About Media