POWER POSITION

September 18 - 30, 2015
The Union of Contemporary Art
Omaha, NE

In Kim Darling’s series, Power Position, the artist used iconography of police uniforms, graphic images, and objects, and combined them with imagery and colors often associated with powerlessness. Darling photographed a woman against a pink background who contorts her body into peacefully yogic, submissive and sometimes unusual positions. These images address the abuses inflicted by government, civil, and religious authorities on people around the world. Power Position suggests the disempowerment of institutionalized authority figures and provokes the viewer to consider our abilities to self-govern.

Although “power position” is a concept from Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese practice of studying one’s position within one’s surroundings, here it alludes to the body language employed by the corporate world to exude confidence.

Darling’s work is topical in this particular moment, as conservative politicians and the news media attempt to demonize protest movements in response to the all- too-common police killings of unarmed civilians across the country.

In a society that privileges incarceration over education, Darling shifts the paradigm to advocate the powerfulness of cultural investigation and edification.