Episode 5: Critiquing Whiteness through Constructive Discomfort: The Art Practice of Jeff Musser

LAC member Hannah Matangos interviews Sacramento-based conceptual artist Jeff Musser.  Musser discusses how he came to tackle race, racism, and whiteness in his work, and the ways in which his perception of these topics – and their relationship to his own personal and family histories – has changed through his artmaking.  In his artmaking practice, he figures himself an amateur historian in researching the history of racial categorization in the United States and beyond while also drawing on his own formative personal experiences that framed and reframed the ways he thinks about race.  Matangos and Musser further critique the centering of Whiteness in the Western art historical canon, discussing how Musser’s own aesthetics work to undermine this centering, often through a “constructive discomfort” on the part of the viewer. (You can view the artworks, artists, and exhibitions discussed in the episode by clicking on the episode title above.)