October 23, 2021 – February 12, 2022
Freeport Art Museum
121 North Harlem Avenue
Freeport, Illinois 61032
Register for Opening Reception
I AM… LEGEND is a collection of wall installations and works on paper that study American experiences haunted by racialized angst and terrorism, visualizing how far we go to allay fear and pursue happiness. Referencing Soul Train and early lynching photographs, Hammie explores embedded anxieties and self-heroization, disrupting nostalgia to propose how personal connections to collective experience allows space for empathy and action.
Through the lens of the ethno-Gothic, a sub-genre of horror developed in Black speculative culture, Hammie taps into and comments on the fear of the Other to ask: From where and by whom do Americans narrate, remember, and commune with our pasts? What stories do we tell to create meaning for ourselves and inform meaning around others? We have survived the past—how do we imagine the future?