Tamir Rice was a 12-year old African-American boy shot by 26-year-old police officer Timothy Loehmann while playing in a park in Cleveland Ohio on 22 November 2014. This teardrop installation accompanied Devan Shimoyama's Untitled (For Tamir), a sculptural work that premiered in We Named Her Gladys, Shimoyama's first solo exhibition at Kavi Gupta in 2019. The sparkling teardrops added to the atmospheric qualities of the work, which was part memorial and part dreamlike celebration—an acknowledgement of sadness along with a simultaneous statement of reclamation of Tamir's stolen innocence.

Artist Background:
Devan Shimoyama (b. 1989, US) is a visual artist whose work explores depictions of the black, queer, male body. Through the medias of painting, sculpture, printmaking and installation, he creates compositions inspired by classical painters such as Francisco Goya, or Caravaggio. However, Shimoyama's use of materials is distinctly contemporary, as is the subject matter he depicts. He has stated that he wants the figures in his work to be perceived as “both desirable and desirous.” He is aware of the politics of queer culture, and the ways in which those politics relate to black American culture. These elements come together in his works in a way that is both celebratory and complicated.

The celebratory aspects come through in his choice of materials, such as fur, feathers, glitter and costume jewels like rhinestones, and sequins. These materials endow the figures in the works with a sort of magical aura and joyful spirit. Yet, many of the men in Shimoyama’s works also literally have jewels in their eyes, giving them a mystified expression, interrupting the connection between their inner selves and the viewer, and suggesting a sort of silent suffering. Many also shed tears.