Mitchell Rembert shares a medium with his late father Winfred, who built his reputation on telling his harrowing life’s story of survival and perseverance through racism and abuse as a black man growing up in the Jim Crow south on tooled and dyed leather. There is much of Winfred’s more recent story that he did not tell in his art. Racial injustice remains an issue in America, and the racism that Winfred experienced as a young man has evolved into a different form of inequality. He knew there was more to say about contemporary society, and Mitchell has the ability and personal experience to tell his own story.
Beyond the leather, Mitchell’s work is singular in his approach – they give us the perspective of a black man in America today who sees and feels the atrocities being done to him and others. By virtue of Mitchell’s passion for creating these artworks, he seeks to carry on his father’s legacy and remind everyone that while things may seem different and evolved, history tends to repeat itself.
