Interrogating Truth
Courtney McClellan, Simulations (University of Alabama), 2020, digital print, 18 x 24 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
In 2014, a curator told me that truth wasn’t an interesting topic to make art about. Truth, she explained, was tied to the construction of the photograph—and that was that. Since then, I have so often wished she were right.
For the last decade, my work as an artist and writer has considered the relationship between truth and fiction. I have longed for a clear arbitration of reality. Through the creation of these texts, I have learned, again and again, that veracity—the notion of truth, or any finite/ universal understanding—is not merely nonexistent, yet it can also be a powerful means to persuade, deny, and manipulate. The decline of journalism, the rise of disinformation, and the proliferation of misinformation have only stoked my desire to know. The artists, writers, art historians, and thinkers shared in this portfolio toy with false narratives, hyperbole, counterfeits, parafiction, and fraud. By interrogating the paradoxically flimsy and stalwart truth, I demonstrate my admiration and antagonism for knowing, wholly. To my disappointment (but hopefully not to yours), these texts offer no certainty. Instead, they grapple.
— Courtney McClellan
Share:
Kameelah Janan Rasheed: Chasing Things That Cannot Be Chased
Colloquial
A Training in Suspense—Stacey Abrams’ While Justice Sleeps
In “Training in Suspense,” Courtney McClellan questions the implication of veracity in the recent spate of politician-penned political thrillers by way of Stacey Abrams’ new novel, While Justice Sleeps.
Kevin Young: The Opposite of a Hoax
On the racialized history of truth, fiction, and hoax.
Carrie Lambert-Beatty: Truth Bias
Carrie Lambert-Beatty discusses her latest research by way of the value of investigation, epistemological behaviors, and fake news in an age of uncertainty.