Michael Ray Charles creates work that confronts America's unsavory past through recontextualizing motifs, text and other pop cultural icons and figures to create a revisionist history. He references caricatures, celebrities, toys, and other visual culture in order to call upon our visual memory from what have consumed and to have us rethink about it in new ways that critiques modern society and the progress (or lack thereof) between race relations in America. His work can make some uncomfortable, but by doing so has us examine the experience of Black Americans in today's culture.
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Lesson PlanA lesson plan based off of Michael Ray Charles would be to have students pick out a toy, movie or other piece of visual culture in their lives and have them research and reflect upon the hidden messages or ideas that the object holds when looking at it for what it actually is. Students after examining their object or item will then create an artwork that critiques the harmful messages that it might be spreading through creating a drawing with whatever chosen media, or to take the physical object itself and alter it in whatever shape or form to also spread that revisionist message.
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Essential Questions
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