Outa They Name references Geneva Smitherman’s, Black talk: words and phrases from the hood to the amen corner, a dictionary of African-American language. In it Smitherman speaks to the “…social critique embodied in Black slang…” Seven definitions based on a single entry, nigga, were appropriated from the author’s text. The exhibition included a sound component, mixed by DJ Supa C of Pittsburgh, injecting examples of the term as used in hip-hop.

This series explores my on-going interest in perceptions of blackness, both as a color and as a social construct—race. The living language of young African - Americans, one continually transforming and recontextualizing American English, is very complex in its usage.