Sculptor Karon Davis. Photo: Aleen Jaghalian.
Sandbags were a last-minute addition to sculptor Karon Davis’s newest installation or at least, replicas of them. The Black Panthers once piled up real ones around the perimeter of their various headquarters as makeshift fortifications against police raids. “No bullet was gonna penetrate three-foot walls,” Los Angeles Black Panther Party leader Geronimo Pratt once explained.
Davis had seen a picture of them, stacked one atop another like long, flat pillows, and was so taken aback by the lengths the Panthers had gone to protect themselves that she recreated them for her new show, “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished,” which opened at Jeffrey Deitch in New York on March 6.