One artist pokes fun at how corporations hijack black culture, call it “urban” and sell it back to everyone.

“I’m concerned with the way ‘urban’ is used to talk about cultural production,” said Ayanah Moor, an artist and professor of print-making and painting at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “There isn’t honesty in the definition.”

Her exhibit, “Our Radio is Bigger than Yours,” opens Tuesday at McDaniel College in Westminster.

“Urban” is code for blackness and “mainstream” means whiteness, she said, and her art, using exaggerated colors and hip trends, satirizes how retailers sell shirts for $40, even though it looks like it’s from a thrift store.

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“So often [college students] have on brand-new clothes that look old,” she said.

While some have called her work “hip-hop art,” Moor shuns labels. Her message speaks to everyone, she said, because everyone is a consumer.

“Everyone wants to be ‘ghetto,’ but no one wants to be poor,” according to an explanation of the exhibit.

“Selling more lifestyle than product, corporate interpretation of hip-hop culture dominates contemporary marketing strategies. ... It’s the people deemed urban who feed every aspect of popular culture but more often than not stay hungry.”

Pittsburgh was home to another artist fond of tackling popular culture and making prints: Andy Warhol, the 1960s and ’70s celebrity known for his iconic Campbell’s soup can and mass production of art. Moor takes her students to Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum — and its gift shop.

“There’s an awareness of what [Warhol] has done with authorship and the relationship between the gallery museum and the store,” she said. “A gallery is just a high-end store for the rich.”

Steven Pearson, a McDaniel art professor, said he invited Moor to the college because he wanted students to learn how Moor works in several media, from prints to installations.

Our Radio is Bigger than Yours

Tuesday through Feb. 16

» Venue: Esther Prangley Rice Gallery in McDaniel College’s Peterson Hall, Westminster

» Opening reception: 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday

» Info: 410-857-2595

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com