by DaShaun Lewis
“I’m not sure what my process is. I kinda just let whatever happens happen. I’m passionate about it because it’s basically a hat my life revolves around at this point.”
Lakota Merlot
Lakota Merlot is an artist hailing from East Coast from Virginia to Key West. They were a hobbyist artist, making paintings and writing short stories before they came to VSU. Across their career, they became less involved with the physical and more into the digital, shifting to more digital-based artwork. One thing that has remained consistent was their love of mental health and horror as subjects. Mental health as a subject has always been around but has become much more prominent as a subject in postmodernism. Horror is more rare because of how deep and visceral it can be, but Lakota takes its darker, grungier aspects and humanizes them in their work. One facet of their personal life has become a leading subject in their work: their transition.
Lakota Merlot was born Brianna N Franklin-Cain, but at some point in their life, they realized their truth, transitioned, and now identified with he/him and they/them pronouns. All of the art in the exhibit relates to their trans identity and how it’s affected their life. It’s seen in their piece Cutting off Life, which depicts them with top surgery, a medical procedure that removes the feminine breasts so that the person can be more masculine presenting. The viewer could see it in the piece with scars under the chest. The most prominent and peculiar part of this digital illustration is the head replaced with plants and the left arm severing one of them with blood dripping out. Lakota tells me that it represents “the ending of thriving life.” They tell me that all their work is up to interpretation and that they could mean anything to the viewer. Based on the context of their transition, I believe it means the end of their life before transitioning and how it may have affected their personal life and connections.
Transitioning is a very frightening process because of the issue of acceptance of the people they knew before transitioning, especially from family. If the family rejects a person after coming out as trans, they can get belittled, insulted, disowned, or even killed, and that fear keeps them from being open about their truth. That rejection has also led to suicide attempts in high numbers and a startlingly high suicidal ideation rate. That theme can be seen in the sculpture with a coffin on the ground with flowers and a teddy bear. At first glance, one can assume the concept is about death in some fashion, whether it’s a friend or family member, but with the context of the previous artwork, it becomes much more complex. Lakota says it has multiple components: the phrase “make your bed and lie in it,” suicide, and how people seek out suicide and death as comfort. This is a rather morbid piece that speaks about the unspoken and horrifying statistics of transgender suicide.
Both pieces transition to the mixed media piece, Pull Me Out. It features a black glove with string protruding from a scratchy black background. I interpret this as giving Lakota or anyone a helping hand and pulling them from the darkness. When isolated after crucial events in someone’s life, they feel they have no other place to go than darkness, but someone offering them their support and comfort is just the thing they need to stop them from going over the edge. Reaching out and taking their hand, pulling them from darkness gives them the love and acceptance they need, and this piece personifies that. They come together to tell a cohesive narrative about Lakota themselves and anyone else experiencing what they are.
The Senior show takes up two galleries, the large Dedo Maranville Gallery and the much smaller Martha G. Smart Student Gallery. The Dedo Maranville gallery hosts most of the artwork from the seniors. Every corner of it has art from a different senior, making the room a giant explosion of creativity and color. Lakota’s works were not displayed in the Dedo with the seniors, though. They got the entirety of their works shown in the Martha G. Smart Gallery completely by themselves. Lakota feels their work doesn’t measure up to the others in the “Farrago” gallery, lamenting they got the student gallery room instead of being with the rest of the seniors’ works. However, I disagree; their art and message have put them on the same level as the other senior work. It’s a very personal and intricate collection of pieces that speak directly from their heart. The small size of the room creates a sense of intimacy, and having all the artworks close together helps the viewer take in the weight and volume of the subject matter. Each senior has a story; they tell their story through the art they create, and witnessing Lakota’s work and getting more context from them only makes me appreciate the work more.
DaShaun Lewis is Junior Art Education Major aiming to become an Art Teacher for the Department of Defense.