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A new installation at the Health Museum breaks down racial binaries Photo of Molly Glentzer Molly Glentzer May 22, 2017 Updated: May 22, 2017 1:52 p.m. Facebook Twitter Email LinkedIn Reddit Pinterest Comments Angelica Dass, a Brazilian artist who lives in Spain, poses at the entrance to her exhibition "Humanae," on view at the Health Museum through Sept. 5. Angelica Dass, a Brazilian artist who lives in Spain, poses at the entrance to her exhibition "Humanae," on view at the Health Museum through Sept. 5. Photo: Molly Glentzer, Houston Chronicle The piece: "Humanae" The artist: Angelica Dass Where: The Health Museum, through Sept. 5 Why: What looks like a playground of photographic building blocks turns out to be a thoughtful exercise in illustrating the beauty of human diversity. The chromatic scale of more than 1,800 "spot" colors produced by Pantone have long been used by people who are picky about getting gradations of color perfect. The fashion design industry names a "Pantone color of the year" annually that drives trends across home design, as well. But Brazilian activist and artist Angelica Dass has used a Pantone palette to create more than 4,000 portraits across 17 countries and 26 cities to illustrate that there's no such thing as black and white in the human race. Everyone falls somewhere in the warm, earth-toned browns, creams and pinks. The Health Museum's installation from her ongoing "Humanae" project fills one gallery with a playground-inspired stack of wooden cubes containing 250 portraits, representing the scope of colors she has encountered and all the cities she has visited. Dass photographs each volunteer subject in even light, with bare shoulders, then matches an 11-pixel-by-11-pixel spot from the middle of their noses to a Pantone color and drops the portrait into a block of that color. Only two faces are a constant in her installations: Her father's, which is brown, and her grandmother's, which has a pinkish glow. Dass launched "Humanae" about five years ago, thinking about the color of her family. She started with portraits of herself and her husband, a blond Spaniard. "As you can see, I am brown with curly hair. But I'm very brown to be white. Because I am white, too," she said. "And I'm very brown to be a native Brazilian. I'm very proud to be who I am." (For the record, she's Pantone 75-22 c.) Growing up in Rio de Janeiro, Dass always felt the frustration of pinkish Crayolas labeled "flesh" or "skin." When she was older, taking a cousin to a fancy French school, people treated her as if she must have been a nanny or servant. Brazil's long history of black slavery did not end until 1888. "The ones who were the slaves in the 1890s continued to be servants in the 1900s," she said. "Now people like me who have jumped a level in society have an opportunity to talk about it." Her father was an engineer; her mother, a teacher. Dass attended art school to become a costume and set designer, then moved to Madrid 12 years ago and earned a graduate degree in photography. "Humanae" crosses the boundaries between art and activism. With each city she visits, Dass usually sets up a studio to keep adding to the portraits. And her residencies often include community workshops. (At a city on the border of Switzerland and Italy where many refugees pass through, her temporary studio offered classes in Italian as part of its programming.) Museum settings are fine and important, but she's happiest when "Humanae" gets staged outdoors. It has taken many forms, even covering the sides of buildings. "I really want, through these photos, to make noise in the streets," she said. Bookmark Gray Matters. It's always felt the frustration of pinkish Crayolas. Photo of Molly Glentzer Molly Glentzer Follow Molly on: http://www.facebook.com/mollyglentzer Molly Glentzer, a staff arts critic since 1998, writes mostly about dance and visual arts but can go anywhere a good story leads. Through covering public art in parks, she developed a beat focused on Houston's emergence as one of the nation's leading "green renaissance" cities. During about 30 years as a journalist Molly has also written for periodicals, including Texas Monthly, Saveur, Food & Wine, Dance Magazine and Dance International. She collaborated with her husband, photographer Don Glentzer, to create "Pink Ladies & Crimson Gents: Portraits and Legends of 50 Roses" (2008, Clarkson Potter), a book about the human culture behind rose horticulture. This explains the occasional gardening story byline and her broken fingernails. A Texas native, Molly grew up in Houston and has lived not too far away in the bucolic town of Brenham since 2012. 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