2024 Annual Benefit Fashion Show

Just Clownin’ Around

Rachel Glen is a mixed media artist who primarily focuses on illustrations. She has a passion for researching and creating work based on the history of various overlooked traditions and cultural norms. After sewing their own clothes for the past few years she decided to co-create this collection as a challenge and chance to express ideas in a different visual medium.

Cedar (they/them) is a Baltimore-based artist currently attending their first year at Maryland Institute College of Art as an illustration major and ceramics minor. They are an aspiring cartoonist on their way to publish their own stories. Also working as an interdisciplinary artist, Cedar is always finding new ways to incorporate their passion for illustration into any medium they get their hands on. This includes watercolor, oil paint, ink, animation, ceramics, fashion design, and photography to name a few. Their stories tackle subjects on identity and culture as a way to normalize the presence of underrepresented groups (such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and disabilities) in various medias.

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Collection Notes

Clowns have had an array of forms since the Jesters of the 14th century (which often mocked neurodivergent people), but they didn’t begin mocking Black people until the early 17th century with the emergence of minstrelsy in the circus.

Yet they’ve been so far removed from their origins, most people don’t question why clowns slap on afros, big noses, and wide red lips for the sake of comedy. What happens to the group of people who we’re subconsciously being told are inherently funny-looking as a result?

As a Black person you’re always being convinced that your appearance is strange. It’s just normalized. And it takes effort to unlearn that. The things we find comedic are no exception to pushing discriminatory prejudice.

So within this collection, we’re reclaiming comedy that’s intended to hurt Black people’s value in themselves and the way they look. Black people aren’t the victims of shameless comedy but the coordinator of our own fun.