Reviews!

BasketShop is pleased to present Jesse Meredith: So That We May Fear Not, a show organized by the Salt Lake City Arts Council.

So That We May Fear Not investigates nuances and contradictions of self-styled ”Patriot” ideologies, grounded in the whitewashed narrative of American History and coupled with a notion of righteous conquest through strength. What emerges is an aggressively defensive movement of (mostly) working class white Americans who genuinely feel as though the ideological ground they stand on is under attack. But it is also a desperate last grab at legitimacy in the face of cultural progress and capitalism’s abandonment of the middle class. Meredith’s choice of utilizing the aesthetics of this subculture strives to examine threads within this front so we might re-weave this particular angst driven community into a softer, more collaborative society.

While Meredith does not share their politics of individualism and exceptionalism, in 2016 he joined a Midwestern militia as a way to penetrate and understand the movement that spearheaded such a dramatic political shift in the United States. During the following years, he participated with and recorded these men as they enacted heroic fantasies in camo gear, navigating the Illinois forest preserves, feeling the safety of camaraderie as they rehearsed scenarios that bore little resemblance to the conflicts that were playing out in American society. His work separates the instinct these men share towards self-preservation from their more toxic tendencies of white supremacy and xenophobia, promoting a self-awareness that bridges gaps between ideologies and cultivates connective conversations about identity, safety, and belonging.

Meredith’s work has been exhibited in Chicago, New York, Peoria, Philadelphia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Limassol (Cyprus), and Buenos Aires (Argentina). He has been an artist in residence at ACRE (Steuben WI) and La Ira De Dios (Buenos Aires AR). He earned an MFA in photography from SAIC, where he was awarded the 2018 Weinstein Memorial Fellowship. He is a Lecturer in photography at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and is currently Artist in Residence at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.