What Does It Mean to Matter (Community Autopsy)
2019
Christopher Myers
Artist, American, born 1974

A combination of sumptuous pattern and tragic content, What Does It Mean to Matter (Community Autopsy) was first shown at a 2020 exhibition of Myers’s fabric works at the Fort Gansevoort gallery in Los Angeles. The title of the show, Drapetomania, was a reference to both the draped medium of the works and the name of a 19th-century pseudo-disease used to pathologize the behavior of fugitives from slavery.
Myers has said: “The image of the autopsy sheet marked by a coroner has become central to the imagery and conversations of Black Lives Matter. Here I combine several of the wounds from some of the more high-profile cases...I wonder what can be done to tell our young people that they matter, before they are inscribed in a coroner’s report. Included in the piece are the autopsies of Laquan McDonald, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown Jr., Antwon Rose Jr., Miriam Carey, Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., Ezell Ford, and Jordan Edwards.”
Artwork overview
-
Medium
cotton appliquéd on furnishing and specialty fabrics
-
Credit Line
-
Dimensions
overall: 243.84 × 426.72 cm (96 × 168 in.)
-
Accession Number
2021.1.1
More About this Artwork

Article: Artist Christopher Myers Considers What It Means to “Matter”
We talk with him about his process and inspiration, from the quilts of Gee’s Bend to cutouts by Henri Matisse.
Artwork history & notes
Provenance
The artist;[1] private collection, New York; purchased 2020 by (Fort Gansevoort, New York and Los Angeles); purchased 2021 by NGA.
[1] The autopsy reports of Laquan McDonald, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Antwon Rose, Miriam Carey, Emantic Bradford, Ezell Ford, and Jordan Edwards were used by the artist as the basis for the work.
Associated Names
Exhibition History
2019
Christopher Myers: Drapetomania, Fort Ganzevoort Los Angeles, 2019-2020.