“This Sh*t Hard: Part IV”

Make a statement in any room with this framed poster printed on high-quality paper, with a partly glossy, partly matte finish. • 10 mil (0.25 mm) thick paper • Paper weight: 260 g/m² • .75” (1.9 cm) thick ayous wood frame • Acrylite front protector • Hanging hardware included • Blank product components in the US sourced from Japan and the US • Blank product components in the EU sourced from Japan and Latvia How to attach hooks on 24″ × 36″ horizontal frames: Place each of the mounting hooks 1 inch (2.5 cm) from frame corners when hanging horizontally. COLLECTOR'S CURATORIAL STATEMENT “This Sh*t Hard: Part IV” REIGNITED Series Kenneth “__yak” Vann, Jr. Mixed Media on 15 × 11 in. Canvas Paper, 2026 $179.98 “This Sh*t Hard: Part IV” is a small-format work with the conceptual weight of a much larger canvas. It distills the core language of the REIGNITED series into a concentrated field of pressure—where image, text, and material collide to document the lived experience of becoming under constraint. At the center is a fractured portrait—rendered through stencil, abrasion, and interruption—suggesting a figure that is both present and contested. The surface carries remnants of Book of Leviticus (Chapter 11), a biblical text concerned with classification: what is deemed clean or unclean, acceptable or rejected. Here, that language is no longer sacred or stable. It is torn, partially erased, and embedded into the composition as residue rather than authority. This gesture is critical. By disrupting the text, Vann reframes systems of judgment—religious, cultural, and social—as inherited structures that continue to shape how identity is read, performed, and valued. The figure is not simply depicted; it is positioned within a continuum of evaluation. Materially, the work reflects this tension: Charcoal marks assert immediacy and authorship, moving between control and collapse Coffee stains introduce time and lived wear, embedding the surface with a sense of use and memory Red acrylic underlayers (left intentionally intact) function as both energy and pressure—heat beneath the image Heavy metallic gold splatter and scraping crown the composition, oscillating between value and corrosion, luxury and excess Text fragments—“THE SOUND OF SILENCE,” “BE SEEN NOT HEARD,” and the handwritten “THIS SH*T HARD”—form a psychological framework around the figure. These are not decorative phrases; they are conditions. They articulate a world where visibility is demanded, but voice is regulated—where expression must navigate expectation, scrutiny, and internalized restraint. For collectors, this work represents a key entry point into REIGNITED’s broader thesis: that identity, particularly within Black expressive culture, is forged through sustained pressure rather than passive emergence. The title itself functions as both statement and theory—grounding the work in lived truth while resisting abstraction. “This Sh*t Hard: Part IV” is not about struggle as spectacle. It is about structure—about the systems that define, compress, and attempt to contain—and the act of making as a form of resistance within them. Owning this piece is not simply acquiring an image; it is acquiring a fragment of a larger, unfolding archive—one that documents the transformation of pressure into authorship, and silence into form.