Artist Statement

When I was a child, I remember the awkward feeling of recognizing that my friends with darker skin were treated differently than me. When I moved to China in early 2013, I noticed that despite my identity as a minority, I was treated as though I was special—a marked difference from the experience of my friends and co-workers with darker skin. Upon returning to America in 2016, I rekindled my investigation of identity, which would become the enduring focus of my work. 

My current body of work aims to examine the construct of race from two vantage points. One aspect falls loosely into the category of history painting. For example, the painting titled “We Did Not Exist Before 1681” questions how the term white first appeared in early 17th century Colonial Maryland. The second aspect investigates the many ways race has affected my family. The painting titled “Undesirable, Swarthy Swede in 1817: Proud White Southerner in 1860” asks what was lost when my father’s side of the family morphed from being not the right kind of white in 1817, to fighting proudly for the Confederacy in a single generation. I also examine how that shift created a schism between the many sides of my family, particularly the Native American side, who were not considered white. Finally, I scrutinize how being viewed as white has affected my personal outlook on the world.

• Jeff Musser