Susan Silton
“As part of the project In Plain Sight, Los Angeles-based artist Susan Silton has chosen the text “BURSTING IN AIR” to be skywritten above Nueces County Jail in Texas. The text is excerpted from the United States’ national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner: “And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air…”
In 2017, the Neuces County Sheriff’s Office, under the leadership of Jim Kaelin, began a partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to identify undocumented inmates and initiate their deportation proceedings. Since 2019, the jail has also been under investigation for allegations of excessive force on inmates by several jailers. Most recently, calls for Kaelin’s resignation have intensified after he shared a Facebook post suggesting that George Floyd’s death may have been staged.
The Star Spangled Banner—adopted as the United States national anthem in 1931— was written in 1812 by amateur poet and attorney Francis Scott Key, on the culmination of the War of 1812 with Britain. Descended from wealthy slaveholders in Maryland, Key was appointed U.S. district attorney in 1833, and in that position fiercely protected slavery as an institution.
For Silton, the conflation of events surrounding Neuces County Jail finds a metaphorical home in the phrase “BURSTING IN AIR.” The text responds to the cumulative violence and systemic racism that lies at the very heart of the country’s founding, and continues to set its course in institutions such as Nueces County Jail. More poetically, Silton also suggests that the skywritten text is symbolically supplanting bombs bursting in air.”
BIO
Susan Silton resides in Los Angeles. Her interdisciplinary projects engage multiple aesthetic strategies to mine the complexities of subjectivity and subject positions, often through poetic combinations of humor, discomfort, subterfuge and unabashed beauty. Silton’s work takes form in performative and participatory-based projects, photography, video, installation, text/audio works, and print-based projects, and presents in diverse contexts such as public sites, social network platforms, and traditional galleries and institutions.
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