(gentle music) - We are gonna go down to the straightaway near the covered bridge to go pick up some beer cans.

To harvest some beer cans, as I call it.

(gentle music) I'm a multimedia artist.

I'm working in video, I work in photography, I work in beer cans.

Right here.

We found one.

(gentle music) I live in Delhi, New York, which is in Delaware County.

And it is very rural.

We're in the northern part of the Catskills.

It's beautiful.

It's like one of the most beautiful places in the world, in my opinion.

I grew up here.

My mother's side of the family is like multi-generational, so I have very deep roots in the area, the White side of my family.

So I'm biracial, African, European-American.

I did not have a lot of, like a very strong relationship with the Black side of my family.

My parents got divorced when I was very young.

And so I was raised in this White space with my very White family and always trying to fit in as like, one of the only Black kids in school.

People were very welcoming.

People were generally kind.

People were also racist.

Being called the N word in the grocery store by another kid, or overhearing somebody calling my mother a name.

But there were also like these microaggressions that were occurring all the time, and I don't, and we just didn't have the language for it as a culture, I think.

But also I didn't have the language or the knowledge that this was something that was bigger than just me, kind of experiencing something that was "normal", until I was much older.

Living in this rural space, watching politics sort of shift in like 2015.

And like the way people were acting out to sort of protect their own personal interest was like shifting, right?

I started seeing people in my neighborhood and in this area erecting Confederate flags and hanging them off the backs of their trucks and like off barns.

And I was just horrified.

And it was like, as somebody who is a minority in this very White space, was like, "Oh my God.

Like, I think something is really shifting, you know?"

We've always had our racism, but like something's fortifying with this, with them.

And so I would talk to friends, my White friends, and White family members and would often get the response, "At least we know who the jerks are.

You know, it's freedom of speech, Christina.

Like, people are allowed to say whatever they want."

And I was probably more horrified by those responses than I was by the actual flags.

Because it just was so dismissive.

And I was just so angry because I was frightened for myself, for people who look like me, people who come to this area that I love very much.

Like I'm deeply in love with my community.

I'm deeply in love with this place.

I'm not going to just leave.

I'm going to try to do good while I'm on this planet and be a part of my community and perhaps challenge them sometimes because I care very deeply about our future.

I started to think about what kinds of objects would represent place, this place.

Rural, but also problematic, beautiful, all of these things.

And so I'm walking along and I'm like, "Ah!

It's the beer cans!

And the road sodas!"

This is the way I describe it.

And I know these guys, so I'm not even just making this up.

Like I know that this is what happens.

Guys get outta work and they're driving home and they're like, "Nobody's gonna tell me I can't have a beer on my way home from work.

I worked hard today."

And so they have their beer, they chuck the beer cans out the window so that if they get pulled over, there's no evidence, or if they've got like a spouse that might question their behaviors, there's no evidence.

And so, a lot of the back roads in this area are littered with these emptied beer cans.

I cut the tops off.

Basically deconstruct them so the tops and the bottoms are off and they just become these like curled pieces of aluminum.

And then I soak them in a bath to decontaminate them.

If they're smaller pieces, I then hand cut each piece.

Larger pieces, I have employed the wonderful paper shredder that I purchased, and it's great.

So they become like these like long strips of fringe and then I glue them to a surface.

And I just kind of build from the bottom and do layers up.

So it's like this very fringy, curled, fringe finished product.

(upbeat music) People love them.

They absolutely love them.

They're sparkly, they're poignant.

I think the beauty of sparkly things draws people in.

And as people are interacting with the piece, they're like, "Oh, this is a bigger conversation."

It's like a gentle way to kind of approach a topic that can be uncomfortable.

So the way I see it is that these cans are acting as microaggressions against the environment, but like it's symbolic of microaggressions towards people.

There is this culture of power over place that I think that White, local, rural people have.

And to me, tossing road sodas is an expression of that power or that desire for the power over place.

Kind of commanding, like, "This is my space to do as I want."

And we all do it, right?

Like, so I'm saying this about my local community because it's the community that I know the best.

But like every group of people in the world does this to some extent.

So I try to get people to think about that.

And how it's related to their own personal experiences and reflect on themselves.

That's the main goal, is that I'm making work that resonates with people and helps people sort of understand how they interact in the world.