Narrative

Artist statement
The System
Michael Faris

The System is a series of artworks examining systemic racism in the United States and the ways racial inequity is produced, reproduced, and maintained through social, political, economic, and institutional systems.

The series was initiated by a conversation with a White man who dismissed the concept of systemic racism as, in his words, “bullshit.” His response reflected a broader belief held by some White Americans: that racism is primarily a matter of individual prejudice and that the United States has entered a “post-racial” society. The System challenges that assumption by examining the structures and practices through which racial inequality persists, including when explicit racial prejudice is absent or denied.

A central framework informing the series is Critical Race Theory, particularly the concept described as Critical Enlightenment Theory. Within this framework, exposing the mechanisms through which racial privilege and inequality are produced can make those mechanisms visible and, consequently, create opportunities to challenge them. The work therefore seeks not only to document racial inequity but also to reveal the often-obscured systems that allow it to persist.

The System examines the ways systemic racism can shape everyday life for people from historically marginalized racial groups. Its subjects include health care and maternal health, birth outcomes, education, housing, nutrition, employment and workplace practices, transportation, voting access, and other institutions that influence people's opportunities and quality of life.

The individual works in this series function as points of entry into a larger system. Rather than presenting racism solely as an encounter between individuals, the series asks viewers to consider what happens when discriminatory histories, policies, institutional practices, economic structures, and racial assumptions become interconnected. What may appear to be an isolated disparity can become evidence of a much larger pattern.

Ultimately, The System asks viewers to look beyond the question of whether an individual person is racist and instead examine how racial inequality can be produced by systems, and how those systems can be recognized, challenged, and ultimately changed.