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Transcription: [00:00:01]
{SPEAKER name="Shinique Smith"}
As I'm doing the piece, it kind of turned into a sort of memorial, in a way,
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the hip-hop stars that are depicted, they are hip-hop and graffiti-related,
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People who mean something to me and my past that are all now gone.
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There's Tupac, and Aaliyah, Lisa Left Eye, Notorious B.I.G.,
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O.D.B., Jam Master J., Eazy E., James Brown, and Keith Haring and Basquiat.
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There are small images of them in varying scales and from different parts
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that are referenced throughout the installation.
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I think the way that my installation is put together is kind of
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like something like I was reconnecting with myself as a teenager, and
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putting up images of stars that I admired but had also gone away,
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and kind of making this very feminine memorial
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to them and using also Nikki Giovanni's script
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which is about expressing one's self and the struggle of that.

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{SPEAKER name="Benjamin Bloom"}
Can you talk specifically about the pink heels?
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Those are kind of, those are really set apart in your installation and I really noticed those.

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{SPEAKER name="Shinique Smith"}
Well they're, they're something that I've had around for a long time, and I think it really went with the piece,
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I think the type of pink heels that they are they are like
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sort of tennis shoe high heels with chains and
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rhinestones, a little bling added to them, but there's something
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kind of little-girl like and innocent about them being there
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it's I think the gesture of leaving the shoes is almost like the gesture
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that one the action of one leaving
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a candle at the base of a little memorial in the street,
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but there's just a pair of shoes.