Exhibitions

WOKE 3: I AM

State Gallery + Studios (The Forge) / 217 Willow St. February 5 - March 8th

Woke 3

The Forge is proud to present I AM … in the studio, a new immersive exhibition by artist in residence Woke 3.

This body of work uses portraiture as a metaphor for how identity is shaped, commodified, consumed, preserved, or discarded within capitalist systems. The figures are painted on repurposed industrial posters, materials tied to labor, branding, product exchange, and mass production. Within this context, the poster functions as both surface and symbol, representing systems that assign value, utility, and visibility.

As these figures exist on materials meant to advertise, sell, or instruct, they become positioned as products themselves. Their bodies mirror the logic of consumption that governs labor economies and food systems, where bodies are harvested, traded, and extracted for value. This framework draws from the history of the United States, where people of African descent were forced into labor and treated as commodities within economic systems built on exploitation.

That logic has not disappeared. It has shifted form. Today, bodies continue to be disciplined, surveilled, and extracted through modern labor systems built on precarity, disposability, and unequal access to power. Labor remains racialized, bodies remain categorized, and value is still assigned based on productivity rather than humanity.

In this context, the work resists erasure. Painting on disposable materials becomes an act of preservation. What was meant to be temporary is slowed down. What was meant to be used up is made visible.

The title I AM functions as a declaration. It asserts existence without qualification, before productivity, branding, or use. The figures are not idealized or heroic. They are present. Identity here is not a product to be consumed, but a lived experience that endures within and beyond the systems that attempt to contain it