A Color Removed, by Michael Rakowitz, was conceived in 2015 in response to the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by the Cleveland police. Rice had been playing with a toy gun that had the orange safety tip removed when he was fatally shot. A Color Removed is a city-wide participatory project that confronts the use of the color orange as a symbol of safety and gestures to removing the color orange from the city of Cleveland and suspending its future use. The public art project directs attention to the way safety is distributed unequally within one community and how we can deconstruct the symbol of orange as a safe color to create true solidarity among citizens.
The project has been included in FRONT International: Triennial for Contemporary Art in Cleveland Ohio. The collection bins for orange safety products are stationed throughout the city and their contents will be displayed at SPACES Gallery in Cleveland. The exhibition runs from July 14 - September 30, 2018.
