Within Our Gates- Human Sacrifice in the American Landscape

March 30, 2003 - June 19, 2003

Keith Morris Washington personalizes the memory of lynchings through his mural-like paintings, evoking the pain and the tragedy of the African-American experience. He depicts the pastoral scenes and tranquil settings where lynching, without lawful trial and mob-oriented, actually took place.

Washington focuses on the memory of lynching in America during the Reconstruction Era to the late 20th Century by painting lynching sites, and by juxtaposing the landscapes with text of what once happened there. In order to understand lynching in the US, Washington thoroughly researched his subject matter, in distant places and time, from the Aztec to Mayan practices to the burnt offerings of flesh by the Druid and Celtic clans of the British Isles.

He examined how lynching expressed irrational vengeance, human sacrifice and indigenous terrorism to keep a stigmatized segment of society “in” line.

Washington earned his BFA with Distinction at the Massachusetts College of Art in 1993. He received his MFA from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 2000. He is an Artist-In-Residence of  Northeastern University's AAMARP program, teaches at the Mass College of Art and Wheelock College.

His work has been exhibited throughout Boston and New England, in New York, and Washington DC. He is the recipient of numerous awards, among them the Blanche E. Colman Award, Tufts University.