Philadelphia Weekly

Although she’s lost friends to the violent streets of North Philadelphia, Telia Jones doesn’t see herself dying young.  Instead, the 17-year-old high school junior envisions earning a college business degree before opening her own beauty salon.

She’ll be happy to tell you about this herself.  Just go to Logan Square at 18th and Vine streets, directly in front of Family Court, and look for her.  She’ll be there for the next six months.  On display inside a makeshift coffin.

“I haven’t seen it yet,” says Telia, who lives near Seventh and Dauphin streets with her mother and grandmother.  “I guess when I do it’s gonna be a little weird.”

What Telia hasn’t yet seen is a work recently completed by controversial New York mixed media artist Dread Scott that takes its title – “...Or Does it Explode?” – from the last line of Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem.”  Commissioned by the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program to run through October, “...Or Does it Explode?” features life-size color photos of a dozen fresh-faced Philadelphians lying inside rectangular “light boxes” aligned like, well, coffins. 

Each box is wired with audio that allows visitors to listen as the young people, who range in age from 14 to 19, discuss their goals and the various obstacles—including sudden, violent death—that might make reaching them impossible.

“I wanted to make it grave-like,” explains Scott, a 44-year-old Brooklyn resident who gained national notoriety in 1989 for draping an American flag across a floor at the Art Institute of Chicago.   “So yes, the boxes are supposed to evoke coffins.  But the kids are on this vibrant yellow background, they have light coming out from under them, they look the opposite of dead.  I wanted that tension. 

“Maybe people will ask, ‘Are kids being killed?  Are their futures being suffocated?”

Scott wants those people to know that the answers are yes and yes—especially if they’re inquiring about black kids. 

Virtually all the coffins’ occupants, not coincidentally, are African American.

“This is a society where statistics show that one in nine black men between the ages of  I think 22 and 34 are in prison,” Scott says.  (Dee Johnson of the Pennsylvania Prison Society confirms Scott’s ratio although she says the inclusive ages are 20 to 34.)  “I look at this piece as part lament for the actual squandered and suffocated and lost potential and part hope in the faces and stories of these kids.  And part indictment of a society that has not done and frankly I don’t think can do better for our youth.”

Mural Arts Program executive director Jane Golden, who’s overseen the creation of 3,000 murals across the city, sees “...Or Does it Explode?” as compelling public art that pleasingly augments the effort she’s devoted herself to over the last 25 years. 

“Our goal isn’t to create 3,000 new murals over the next few years,” Golden says.  “A more significant goal is to create art that is impactful, art that is moving, art that mines the social imagery of Philadelphia.  It doesn’t have to be work that’s confined to a wall.”

Scott, an intense yet polite self-avowed “Communist revolutionary” who sports a Mohawk haircut, chatted at length with his subjects before photographing them.  He says he repeatedly heard tales that went beyond street violence reprises. 

Some kids, he says, complained about poorly run schools staffed by indifferent teachers, about hostile police officers, about systemic racism that sometimes makes them feel like all the trying in the world won’t get them over the top.

“Many of them talked about things like being picked up by the police for doing nothing more than being in a Chinese food joint late at night,” he says. 

He adds that a 17-year-old young woman named Ieisha told him that while she aspires to become a social worker, she isn’t planning on attending college because she’s convinced she’s ill-prepared.

“I know she needs a Master’s in social work,” Scott says.   “So I wondered, ‘Is this kid lazy?’  But then she explained that sometimes she goes to class and her teacher will give them a worksheet that takes 15 minutes to do, and Ieisha will ask, ‘Is this all the learning we can do today?’  And the teacher says, ‘Yeah.’”

“Is this the same education and opportunity that, say, Bill Gates and Steven Jobs had?” Scott wonders.

For her part, Telia Jones, who attends Community Education Partners High School at Front and Hunting Park, frets more about happenstance violence than substandard schooling. 

She says she understands the death imagery in “...Or Does it Explode?” all too well, relating a story about a friend who recently decided to ride his dirt bike in the vicinity of 20th and Diamond streets.  Telia says her friend wouldn’t pull over so that a car could pass him. 

The car’s driver ran the kid over, killing him.

“He did it on purpose,” Telia says, adding, “I hope and I don’t think I’ll lose my life in the street like that.  But where I live, you just never know.”