Plasticized, standardized and flattened reproductive and reproduced body parts reflect sharply distinct color categories (and bodies) and also allude to minimalist art (and its propounded "facts"). Each shelf holds an academic psychology article on race-based cognition in humans, where “race” is typically isolated as an “independent variable” (i.e., a factor a researcher can clearly represent, control, and measure the effect of in experiments). Since “race” in psychology is typically conceived of as self-evident physical appearance, databases of “black,” “white,” etc. faces have been compiled to algorithmically generate “average” faces of given races for convenient and standardizable use in experiments, yielding a troublesome succession of “facts” based on faces that do not actually exist. 

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In putting minimalism and psychology in conversation, my aim is not to condemn, but to ultimately bring in measured (like Robin Wall Kimmerer’s) appreciation of science and the consciousness-expanding, embodying potential of the minimalist impulse. 

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