For this response, I will focus on the first half of Barbara Thompson’s “Decolonizing Black Bodies: Personal Journeys in the Contemporary Voice”. Thompson carefully explores the historical representations of black women as the venus, the odalisque, and as mothers while focusing on the ways in which black artists have confronted the colonial imaginations of black women through their own works.
Both colonial and post-colonial narratives have fixated on the body and purported sexuality of African and black women as a counter-narrative to white womanhood. Where the black woman was lustful, voluptuous, and unclad, the white woman was modest, demure, and pure. African and black artists such as Wangechi Mutu, Sokari Douglas Camp, and Emile Guebehi physically exaggerate the black female form in a variety of mediua. In doing so, they expose the colonial exaggerations of black women as “ethnographic specimen(s) and anthropological curiosities” (283) and disrupt the historical stereotypes.
In the nineteenth century, colonialism created fictionalized narratives of Africa “which reinforced racist visual and ideological landscapes” (284) through photography. This often focused on the idea of harems and the black female nude as a subject. Moroccan artist Lalla Essaydi uses photography to illustrate the construction rather than reality of photography by focusing on the sexuality alluded to veiled African bodies. Photographers Carla Williams, Malick Sidibe, and Alison Saar disrupt the colonial notions of black women by reclaiming the black nude female figure.
For me, the most interesting section of this reading focused on the colonial narratives (and contemporary artistic challenges) of African and black motherhood. The African mother was the cornerstone of colonialism and imperialism, while in the post colonial context, African and black mothers continue to be defined by the colonial interpretations and representations. The figure of a black woman holding a white child was a popular method of highlighting black women’s ‘natural’ caretaker instinct that ignored the experiences of these women. Artists Joyce J. Scott and Senzeni Marasela challenge the “Mammy” figure, dismantling the notion of the nurturing caretaker and highlighting the harmful effects on black women and their children. Recalling the typical pose of a black woman posing with a child in her lap, photographer Fazal Sheikh creates powerful portraits of Somali refugee mothers with their children. By collaborating with the subjects of his portraits, Sheikh empowers them to convey the reality of their experiences.