“Whistle" is a deliberately provocative video project by artist and writer, Nan Collymore that critically examines the intersection of race, gender, and power in American society. Taking cues from Hito Steyerl's concept of invisibility through her work "How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational.MOV File," particularly "being female and over 50,” “Whistle” explores the "Karen" phenomenon—a term denoting confrontational behavior by middle-aged white women, often captured in viral videos.



The piece juxtaposes two historical touchstones: the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, instigated by Carolyn Bryant Donham's false accusation, and the 2017 Whitney Biennial controversy surrounding Dana Schutz's painting of Till. Through this lens, "Whistle" interrogates the weaponization of white female vulnerability against Black Americans, both historically and in contemporary contexts.



Functioning as a palimpsest, the video layers muted expressions from viral videos of racial confrontations with imagery from fashion magazines. This creates a dialectic between societal invisibility and hyper-visibility, questioning notions of desirability, agency, and power. The mouth emerges as a central motif, serving as a multivalent symbol of desire, speech, and contested agency, evoking feminist and queer artists like Anna Maria Maiolino, Ana Mendieta, and David Wojnarowicz who used the mouth as a locus of power and silence.



"Whistle" problematizes intersectional identities with social power structures and invites critical discourse on visibility, the performativity of public confrontation in the digital age, and the complex relationship between white feminism and racial politics. By focusing on the mouth as a portal of both expression and appropriation, the piece engages with discourses on sexuality, bodily autonomy, coercive tactics, and power relations.



The subject's trajectory from youthful visibility to perceived irrelevance illuminates these intersections and raises questions about the construction of white womanhood as a site of purported innocence. Her actions, characterized by confrontational behavior and misplaced aggression, can be interpreted as a response to the dissonance between internalized expectations of the "American Dream" and the stark realities of lived experience.



This work suggests that these attacks on Black people participating in everyday activities represent a misdirected response to systemic patriarchal injustices and unattainable beauty standards. By connecting a brutal historical event to contemporary "Karen" incidents, the artwork draws a through-line in cross-cultural relations in the U.S., suggesting that while the manifestations may have evolved, the underlying structures of white supremacy and racist violence persist. "Whistle" serves not only as a site of remembrance but also as a critical examination of the ongoing legacy of false narratives and their potentially violent outcomes through the lens of white entitlement masked as vulnerability.