Oprah Wept; or Only O Forgives

Oprah Wept; or Only O Forgives is a mobile sculpture performance piece taking place along 14th Street within three blocks of Union Square in both directions. Wearing a custom-built, confessional booth apparatus on their backs, multimedia artists Jabari Owens-Bailey and Tré Chandler will invite viewers to approach the booths as “penitents” and make a spoken confession to any cultural insensitivity they enacted. The artists formed the project in order to satirically investigate pervasive attitudes about race, religion, sex, and class in society as well as the media-inspired notion of absolution through public confession in our “post-ism” American mediasphere.