In UNITED black artist Shani Richards asks can a person take back an offensive/taboo word and make it their own? Richards is fascinated with how people use jewelry, body modifications, shoes, and clothing to convey their race, social status, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and class. She is incensed and inspired by the word Nigger, and how the black community years ago decided to take the N-word back. Blacks recruited the word partly as reclamation and partly out of an inferiority complex born out of oppression. America is not a post racial society so people who identify as white should not be able to hurl the N-word around with out impunity, but it results in “We can but you can’t” situation which fragile and peculiar. UNITED is an exhibition of pendents featuring racial and ethnic slurs, sexual orientations, gender pronouns, and more. Richard’s goal is for the exhibition is that revealing a rainbow of slurs, people will see themselves reflected somewhere in it and maybe gain a greater understanding of the power of the N-word. Slurs create as well as dramatize the distance between the speaker and the person or group spoken of marking boundaries between '“us” and “them”. These slurs occur frequently between people who identify as white and “people of color”. When used by a dominant group against minority groups, slurs are used to keep them “in there place”. Slurs are also use in intergroup name-calling to scold group members for deviating from some group standard. Richards believes we all are implicated in these slurs and that we must face them in order to progress and move forward peacefully in this country. We need to be kind and understanding with each other and accepting of our differences and similarities. The art relies on the audience participation and conversation. Throughout the exhibition, viewers will be invited to wear the pendant of their choice. Selfies posted on social media are encouraged so the conversation can spread out beyond communities.

I usually develop concepts through research. Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a closet full of collars(jabots). She had collars for every occasion for her robe in court, for example she had special collar she wore when she had a ‘dissenting opinion”. As a trained metalsmith/jeweler who is inspired by the things people wear to communicate their status. RBG used the collar as symbol of her power and womanhood. I wanted my collar to reflect the value of knowing history.  I have been fascinated lately with language and using it in my art to literally communicate a message. Ruth Bader Ginsburg often would say “I ask no favor for my sex all ask of our breathren is that they take their feet off our necks”. RBG was quoting Sarah Grimke who was an American Abolitionist and widely held to be the Mother of the Women's Suffrage Movement. The power of those words and how they resonated through time to inspire and drive women to keep fighting for their rights. I titled the piece ‘100th Collar’ to commemorate the anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing and protecting women’s constitutional right to vote. I used my saw frame to cut out a sheet of brass the words of the quote repeated over and over to make the form of the collar. This piece was made for the Suffrage: Inequality. Persistence. Justice. exhibition at Emily Davis Gallery in the Myers School of Art at University of Akron.