Jefferson Pinder

The work of Washington, D.C.-based performance and video artist Jefferson Pinder, featured at Inova/Kenilworth through mid-June, is a study of race through metaphorical opposites: figures in motion against backgrounds in stasis; dark in the context of lightness; black in the context of whiteness. Even when Pinder's videos are in color, he often exploits the camera's ability to overexpose and blow out backgrounds, leaving faces and figures floating in negative space. In one typical video, Pinder combines pop music, all by white singers, with the faces of 10 individuals who vary in the darkness of their skin, age, gender and degree of theatricality.