Open Ended Narratives from February 18th to April 5th, 2025, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Rachel Schmid-James
Just as the cogs of a machine must fit together seamlessly to work, an exhibition must build and mesh into something greater than the individual pieces. In Schroeder Cherry’s current show, Open Ended Narratives, the themes emerge like threads, twisting together to create a fluid experience. While certain motifs show up consistently throughout pieces, the Baltimore-based artist is adamant that he has no interest in telling one story. “There is no one story; viewers bring their own experiences to each piece,” Cherry writes in his artist statement.
The idea that an artist has one message they are attempting to convey is simplistic and confining, as art can mean many things to different people. However, this is not to say that these thematic elements have no context outside of the viewer’s own. The image of the watermelon pops up more than seventeen times throughout the works displayed at the gallery. If the viewer has no knowledge of the historical context Cherry is referencing, the significance of the symbol may go unnoticed.
The watermelon stereotype first emerged in the Southern United States in the 1860s, shortly after the end of the Civil War and the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Former enslavers and Confederate sympathizers were flailing to combat the beginnings of the Reconstruction era, and observing that many formerly enslaved people were growing watermelons on their farms for profit, created a caricature to represent African Americans as immature and dirty. Over time this farce of a statement worked its way into generations of people, becoming a belief that many learned casually through subliminal messages. It appeared in caricatures on children’s television shows and other representations of minstrelsy. In contemporary history, politicians continue to push this stereotype among others to draw in racist supporters.
Unfortunately, the original meaning of the watermelon has become tainted with these narratives, but the African diaspora has worked to restore its original meaning in the community. Before white supremacists got their hands on the symbol of the watermelon, it stood as a message of liberation and autonomy for formerly enslaved individuals in the South. Cherry’s work reclaims the image, raising it into idolatry, a symbol of resistance, while also planting the seeds for a more positive interpretation of it for current and future Black children.
In Cherry’s piece Twins (Future Voter Series), the watermelon takes the form of the two young girls’ swimsuits. They stand with their arms around each other, beaming at an invisible camera. They are proud of their swimsuits, making no effort to hide and instead exuding excitement over being seen in them. While each viewer is invited to add their own details to these girls’ stories, it cannot be said that they yet understand the burden of the stereotype. They become a symbol of hope for the present, that we may someday completely filter out the muddled narrative created by hate, and return it to its revolutionary roots.
The question of divinity is also raised in Cherry’s wall sconce pieces, which depict Black figures as one of the holiest symbols in Christianity: angels. Combining this with the symbol of the watermelon, most notably in the piece Angel Sconce #11, Red Wings, which features the image prominently throughout. Angels are also a symbol with a racist past, often depicting the ideals of whiteness as divine and darker skin as evil. By synthesizing these broader motifs into a piece that seems to reach outward with its curling pieces and a serious face that stares back at you, Cherry continues to weave together strings that connect the ideas of the past and present to those of the future.
Through these works, Cherry takes the history of a harmful stereotype into his hands and melds it into a poetic emblem of joy for the African diaspora. These symbols contribute to the building of a foundation for the narratives that Cherry threads the needle for but never ties off the stitch.
