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Artist Uses Wind Dancers To Express Difficult Topics Like BLM Movement, Gun Violence, And Poverty In Her 37 Paintings
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Whether you've seen them in movies or pictures, or seen them personally, you probably know what a wind dancer is. It's a solemn, happy stick figure that flails about in the wind near a gas station or some dollar store. But Mamie Young saw something more in them: they stand as a comical background in contrast to all of the US's current problems. Mamie draws them inside of these problems as some sort of comical vehicles that tell a story about the tragic events of American life, making the whole image tragicomic, sobering, and current. Behind that stickman smile lies hollowness and anxiety.
More info: mamieyoung.studio | Instagram
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Why Can't You Just Pull Yourself Up
100% of the proceeds of that new piece will be donated to @blackvisionscollective to support the BLM movement.
She started drawing them in 2017 when she saw an exhibit in a gallery in San Diego that used them. She realized that "so many people recognize these figures, yet nobody in the art world was using them as characters in a real way to tell a story. So I decided to make art exclusively using them," she told Bored Panda. In terms of how was she able to generate such compelling narratives using only a silly vessel, she admitted "I used my background as a filmmaker to add a narrative to each of my paintings."
I Am Hollow Inside
Speaking of hollow, in 1983 the AbEx artist Robert Motherwell made a painting titled “The Hollow Men” and although the title of the series may have been inspired by a T.S. Eliot poem about boundaries, in recent years my mind has invaded it with a different meaning. To me it looks like a demon leading the GOP elephant, followed by you-know-who and a parade of sycophants. Hollow indeed. 84AD3358-A...f-jpeg.jpg 
Mamie Young expressed that she wants the viewer to see a familiar object like this in a different light. "I see myself in them," she confessed, and added "they represent us in so many ways: our relationship with society, culture, and each other. These wind dancers have a complexity in them that I want to express." And she's right: her paintings resonate with current American realities like police brutality, Black Lives Matter protests, violence, poverty, inequality, and vanity. Though her paintings are somewhat poignant despite their accuracy, the artist is also socially responsible. She's going to donate all of the proceeds of her painting "Why Can't You Just Pull Yourself Up" to support the Black Lives Matter movement. Let's just hope that these wind dancers bring about the winds of change.
I'm Here To Distract You With Fear!
Remember the "murder hornets"? They've already dropped below the radar.
Wind Dancers
I love the Edward Hopper influences seeping throughout this piece, with the sunlight-and-shadow handling of open space against the emptiness of the wind dancers, connected in their mutual gaze but otherwise alone as with many of the people in Hopper’s works. Very striking.
Iwo Jima
I took this as a riff on agitprop in service to the American military industrial complex, which was cemented by Lyndon Johnson’s “guns and butter” economic policies. This sentiment is decades old but still relevant today, and the famous Iwo Jima tableau (it took several takes to get to the final version) is among the most parodied photo in history. I grew up in the NYC area during the Vietnam era and recall anti-war protesters chanting “Hell no, we won’t go! We won’t die for Texaco!” The men and women in our Armed Forces serve to protect the freedoms we enjoy, including both the artist’s expressions and provocations in this thread and your right to protest against it if you wish.
Inappropriate Wind Dancer - Crime Scene
I love these, they are very poignant not to mention beautiful.
For some reason, I like these very much! The expressionless expressions are priceless. Well done!
I didn't understand many of these. I like the artwork, though.
I love these, they are very poignant not to mention beautiful.
For some reason, I like these very much! The expressionless expressions are priceless. Well done!
I didn't understand many of these. I like the artwork, though.