Brooke Toczylowski

Bio: Brooke Toczylowski is a Brooklyn-based visual/conceptual artist and youth- development educator. As a teaching artist with Working Playground, she currently works to integrate photography into NYC public school curricula. In 2006, she partnered with ArtCorps to work as a volunteer artist-in-residence with an environmental youth group in rural Guatemala. In 2005, she worked in Venezuela with an AIDS-awareness NGO to improve sex education outreach for at-risk teens. She holds a BA in Studio Art and American Studies from Williams College.

Statement: My work explores the constructions, implications, and privileges of white identity in American society. I am interested in the historical loss of cultural identity that many ethnic groups (and my own family) have experienced as a way to become “more white” -- and thus, "more American.” I also see the need to open the discourse among white people about racial tensions and white privilege. In White Faces, I reference the historically racist tradition of blackface minstrel shows to comment on the complicated decision of my Polish and Irish ancestors to slowly shed their European identity. In White Voices, I have used the interview process to create an audio and visual collage of people talking about their own personal experiences with race. Responding to artists like Kara Walker and Enrique Chagoya, I aim not only to further the discussion about racial construction in the United States, but also to help redefine future discourse on whiteness.