At Tubman Gallery in Fort Worth, a mannequin head wearing a black ski mask and wrapped in rope sits atop a worn box fan. The fan hums steadily, until its whir breaks into sharp clanks that sound like distress.
Poetic Malice, the piece by Los Angeles sculptor and performance artist Suni Mullen, portrays the history of lynching and the myth of “the Black monster.” It is one of several works in “Two Tears in a Bucket,” a new exhibition curator Mueni Rudd says is about survival, letting go and healing.
The title comes from a phrase deeply rooted in Black vernacular: “Two tears in a bucket, [expletive] it.” For Rudd, it represents a spiritual shrug.
“Two tears in a bucket resonates this idea of what you need to let go or that process of letting go, learning to let it go, or the lessons from letting go,” she said.
Rudd, who is Kenyan American, brought together four artists from across the U.S. for the exhibition to depict the phrase in their own interpretation.
“I kind of told them that I wanted raw honesty of what that meant for them,” she said.
Harlan Bozeman, based between Arkansas and New Orleans, uses photography to explore erased Black histories and everyday survival. His photograph Failure to Appear is a man holding a water gun. A light streak in the center of the photo blocks his face. It’s a loud comment on systemic criminalization. Another photo, Survival, blends an average domestic life with cultural memory using a man reading a white book titled “survival” in a retro brown-and-white kitchen with modern home appliances.
Rudd was raised in a Kenyan household and didn’t hear the phrase “two tears in a bucket” growing up. But she said she recognized its echoes in her own culture.
“There's versions of that in Kiswahili. There's versions in Luganda. There's a version of that in these other African languages that I've been exposed to all my life. It's just not that one,” Rudd said.
These similarities led Rudd to be intentional about mixing media like photography, conceptual sculptures, ceramics and a short film. She believes multiple interpretations allow for deeper understandings of Black culture, something she says is often viewed through a single lens.
Haitian-born Houston-based ceramicist Day Brierre works with clay slabs that resemble pages from a diary, reflecting personal healing and spirituality, while Kariyana Calloway-Scott, from Decatur, Ga., blends film and spoken word to examine memories of her own and those of her ancestors, motherhood and inherited trauma. Rudd said her goal is to expose Fort Worth residents to a new outlook.
“Now [Fort Worth] gets to have this awareness, this exposure, this new dialogue,” Rudd said. “That's just not gonna come if you're seeing the same things and circling the same.”
To Tubman Gallery founder, Matthew Nelson, Black identity is having a moment in the art world, but the gallery's focus goes deeper — it’s about telling the story of America. Nelson sees the gallery's role as both serving Black audiences in Fort Worth and creating dialogue across all North Texas cultures.
“The Black conversation, as we know, is the American conversation,” he said. “The conversation about Black music is the conversation about American music. The conversation about Black cinema is the conversation about cinema. In the case of a non-Black audience, what we're saying to them is welcome. Welcome to the conversation.”
Rudd views “Two Tears in a Bucket” as both catharsis and preservation. The phrase at its center, she said, has been passed down for generations. Now, it finds new life through art.
“I hope that they see themselves in the work, but then also feel encouraged to speak on it differently,” Rudd said.
“Two Tears in a Bucket” is on view through Oct. 18 at Tubman Gallery, 6613 E. Lancaster Ave., Fort Worth.
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