“Julian Louis Phillips: The Strategic Response Group (TSRG)”
YoU Exhibition
October 2, 2021
For his Year of Uncertainty project, Artist-In-Residence Julian Louis Phillips centers on the psychological and physical presence of the police, referencing police training manuals, protest banners and “civil disorder” tactics. The Strategic Response Group (TSRG) serves as a counter-narrative project that will be defined through gradually developing channels of communication. Experimenting with new methodologies and conceptual frameworks the exhibition will evolve over time with elements such as sculptures, drawings, films, and a series of collaborative youth workshops. Together these address the histories, strategies, and experiences of policing and protest, and explore transformative visions of abolition and an end to the carceral state.
In the Museum’s central atrium, Phillips’ sculptures simulate the appearance of heavy concrete NYPD police barricades but are mobile, lightweight, and soft. These works exemplify the artists’ intervention in and subversion of embodied forms of control and dissent. The artist invites visitors to voice their power and participate by leaving drawings and messages to accumulate directly on the surface of the sculptures. For the Museum’s gallery space, Phillips presents a living room video installation of performance-based films that explore what it means to be “radicalized” in a Black body and the perception of that radicalization. Text and image based drawings will gradually accumulate to cover the surrounding walls. These integrate the visual language of protest signs with the artist’s personal reflections on social justice and resistance work under capitalism.
Image Description: In the center are two TV’s back to back attached to a stand on a decorative square rug. On the left, posters of black and white images from the June 4th, 2020 Bronx protests with a variety of slogans. On the right, mixed medium drawings in red and black pinned to the wall.
Image Description: Two rows of twenty-one large posters of photographs in black and white, with protest slogans in black and white text in both English and Spanish.
Image Description: In the center are two TV’s back to back attached to a stand on a decorative square rug with a brown leather loveseat in front of the TV’s. On the right, three large mixed medium drawings are pinned to the wall.
Image Description: On the left, a drawing by Julian Louis Philips in mixed mediums is pinned to the wall horizontally. On the right, there is the gallery wall text reading the artist’s name “Julian Louis Philips”, the exhibition title “The Strategic Response Group”, and information describing the exhibition and the artist’s work.
Image Description: Three white police barricade sculptures with blue N Y P D text and red and black collaborative graffiti on display in the Queens Museum.
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