Cecil McDonald, Jr.

Cecil McDonald, Jr. (American, b. 1965) The Village Now Knows My Name 2010 Archival pigment print 10 ½ x 7 inch image on 11 x 14 paper Signed Edition of 30   Cecil McDonald, Jr. uses photography, video, and performance to explore the intersections of masculinity, familial relations, and the artistic and intellectual pursuits of Black culture. This particular project was created during McDonald’s artist residency in Lucerne, Switzerland. He used James Baldwin’s essay “Stranger in the Village” as a source of inspiration; in his essay from the collection Notes of a Native Son, Baldwin uses his encounters with the villagers of the remote Swiss village of Loèche-les-Bains as an occasion to ponder the history of Western white supremacy and racism. Exploring parallels of Baldwin’s experiences in Switzerland and his own, McDonald created a multimedia work that deploys photography, Baldwin’s text, installation, and video to create The Village Now Knows My Name. As he explains: “If Baldwin’s id