imowan McLain’s Reburial: Wrathful Architecture was a network of paper walls that filled the Hanes Art Center’s John and June Allcott Gallery in October and November. “It’s a show designed to put the viewer in the position of being a detective,” says McLain, a Carolina Minority Postdoctoral Fellow. He placed some of the exhibit's elements on interior walls so that viewers had to use peepholes to see them.

The exhibit tells the story of McLain’s “reburial” of his stepfather, who had chosen to be buried in the community in Montana where he had lived, though many people there were not particularly fond of him. By way of this exhibit, McLain metaphorically exhumed his stepfather’s body and brought him back to North Carolina, his stepfather’s home. “That is an act of spite and revenge and wrath,” McLain says. “So in a lot of ways the intent of the show is kind of vulgar. It doesn’t turn the other cheek, and it doesn’t forgive; it just says, ‘you don’t belong here,’ and sends him back across the ocean.

“When I talk about things ugly, it tends to come out looking beautiful,” he says. “There’s a sort of transformation that occurs. Though it was an act of spite, I think the beauty comes from my own feelings of redemption.”

To color the paper, McLain soaked it in water containing rust and tobacco. The rust symbolizes ugliness and decay, while tobacco, in Native American culture, often accompanies prayer. Just as McLain submerged the paper, some Christians submerge themselves in water to become transformed. When creating the Baptismal panel, McLain says, he was thinking about several ideas: commitment and faith, water as a means to transport the spirit, and the hypocrisy that occurred when Christianity was sometimes forced upon Native Americans.

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