Tag Archives: race

A Nation in Suspense

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I really enjoyed Pinder’s article on biraciality in contemporary American art because it called my attention to race relations in the U.S. through describing what Pinder refers to as the “racial crossroads of the 20th century”.  By providing examples of drastically different notions of racial hybridity, she shows how the disparity of opinions leaves the nation in suspense, and delves into what representations of racial hybridity represents in contemporary America.  What I found most interesting was the biracial individual’s shift from tragedy to trendy in the eyes of the American people.  For example, in the 19th Century Tiger Woods would have been looked down upon due to his racial background whereas now, images of people like Tiger Woods that represent racial hybridity are viewed as symbols of unity amongst the American people.  Pinder also goes into the difficulty that people of mixed race backgrounds experience when trying to place mentally themselves within the fabric of western civilization: “the west divides its ability to comprehend good/evil and black/white, the way in which it makes oppositions in everything.  Not just simple oppositions but hierarchical, superior/inferior oppositions… so that one is always better than…” (394)  This part of the passage truly grasped my attention because it verbalized a way of thinking so deeply embedded within our society that I never even noticed or bothered to question.  This divisive comprehension can be seen below in Lorraine O’Grady’s piece The Clearing.

Lorraine O'Grady The Clearing

Pinder:  Pinder brings different notions of racial hybridity in contemporary America to the forefront and discusses what images of biraciality in contemporary art represent.

Waegner:  Waegner examines the trend of yellowface/blackface impersonation through Hip Hop art.

Rotimi Fani-Kayode

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Kobena Mercer’s assertions that Rotimi Fani-Kayode “created a photographic world in which the body is the focal site for an exploration of the relationship between erotic fantasy and ancestral spiritual values”(283) and that in his work it is “hard to tell where sexuality begins and spirituality ends”(283) served as guides to me when looking at the work of Fani-Kayode. Fani-Kayode was not interested in finding or expressing one simplified identity but instead created a complex and multifaceted view representative of his gay, African, multi-national, spiritual identity. Thus it is important to consider all of these biographical and personal elements as one when viewing Kayode’s work and stop trying to fragment and dissect the images in terms of their influences. To try to identify any divides or boundaries between the sexual and the spiritual would rob the images of much of their weight and power. Fani-Kayode’s multi-faceted explorations are all located in the image of the black male body. The body “becomes a site for translation and metaphor”(Mercer 284) bridging the divide between differences in race, culture, and sexuality. One way that Fani-Kayode situates the body as the intersection of material and spiritual worlds is through the use of African masks. In his 1987 photograph Ebo Orisa the unclothed artist bends over towards the viewer obstructing his face so that only the back of his head shows as he holds a wooden African mask upside down below his head. Firstly, I find this photograph to be very striking in its formal elements. The posture of the subject and the inversion of the mask transform the figure into an otherworldly creature. Mercer argues that Fani-Kayode’s images like Ebo Orisa are the result of the play of condensation and displacement (288).

Rotimi Fani-Kayode The Golden Phallus, 1989

Rotimi Fani-Kayode The Golden Phallus, 1989

I feel that Fani-Kayode’s 1989 image The Golden Phallus is a wonderful example of the artist’s intertwining of the spiritual and the sexual through the use of the body and elements from his native culture. The image approaches the idea of the fetishized and mythologized black phallus using Yoruba mythology. The artist wears a bird-like mask that recalls the ororo bird of thought an inspiration present in Yoruba myths but the image also invokes the Yoruba god of indeterminacy. Fani-Kayode describes Esu as “The Trickster” and “Lord of the Crossroads” and underscores his importance in Yoruba carnival. The image is both theatrical and supernatural which foregrounds the bridging of man and spirit. The image also foregrounds the subject’s sexuality while critiquing fetishization instead of fetishizing.

Senzeni Marasela

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In Barbara Thompson’s chapter “Decolonizing Black Bodies: Personal Journeys in the Contemporary Voice” my attention was drawn to the work of South African artist Senzeni Marasela.  Marasela uses a variety of media to explore her painful relationship with her mentally ill mother who was absent most of Marasela’s childhood.  She also explores collective memory and colonial perceptions of the black female body in her series of embroidered scenes from the life of Sarah Baartman, a former South African slave who toured Europe as “The Hottentot Venus.”  Sarah Baartman’s body was exoticised and fetishised as embodying the form of a black Venus.  Her body became a site of Western attraction and repulsion and became a representation of racist western imaginations of the back female body.  After she died, her body was dismembered by Napoleon’s physician and her gentiles and brain were put on display at the Musée de l’Homme until Nelson Mandela requested that her remains be returned to South Africa and respectfully buried in 2002.  Thompson discusses the dismantling of the black Venus image and stereotype but doesn’t mention Marasela’s Baartman series (she talks about Marasela’s work in relation to motherhood) which is why I thought I’d highlight it here.  This series both in subject and in medium connects the stereotype of the black Venus and the story of Sarah Baartman with the artist’s relationship with her mother.  The images evoke the ideas of collective consciousness and collective memory by making these connections.  She uses a technique traditionally labeled as “women’s work” and associated with female relationships and tradition.  I think that because of needlework’s history and cultural associations it has the ability to transmit elements of the female experience in a much more intimate and personal way than other mediums are able to.  Additionally, the associations of needlework being a skill passed down through generations of women makes visible the artist’s connection to her mother and to the subject of the series Sarah Baartman as well as to all women who came before her.  In this series Marasela relates the dismembering and scrutiny of Baartman’s body to her own experience as a black woman in a Western urban environment.

 

 

 

The Conundrum of Feminist Art (joint post)

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Nochlin: Nochlin answers the inflammatory question “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” with an analysis of the sociocultural structures that privileged white middle-class masculinity and blocked the “Other” from excelling as an artist.

Wark: Despite its denigration of the individual, conceptual art provided an ironic inspiration for feminist artists such as Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, Eleanor Antin, and Martha Wilson.

“The Artist is Present”: Abramovic boldly makes herself vulnerable in pieces like her most recent work “The Artist is Present” as she transforms her own bodily presence into art.

Taylor: Through new and different media, artists were able to rebel against the overwhelmingly male modernist culture and tackle issues such as race and gender.

Many feminist artists provide us with works which might seem cryptic to the audience when taken at face value. Why is it that those who ascribe to a movement meant to exhibit or even explain their identities present their artwork in a way that is less approachable for the viewer?

Feminist art created in the 1960s and 1970s emerged as a response to the ongoing feminist movement in America. Like many social and political movements at the time, the feminist movement ascribed to explain and support the identity of its cause, in this case women, for more progress in the nation. Although feminist artists created their works in response to the movement, the strategy that they use creates a challenge, rather than an easy way, for their audience to understand their identities. Their use of abstract, conceptual art in opposition to the male-dominated modernist movement creates a divide between their audience and their work of art. The mediums which the feminist artists use – installation, film, performance, and etc.- and the abstract way in which they apply them can prove isolating for many viewers.

Performances pieces created by the likes of Abramovic and Schneeman, which the average audience might take at face value as weird and unapproachable, can be a barrier to understanding, rather than providing a window into the experience of the “Other”. Such art can prove difficult to relate to, regardless of shared identities. If feminism truly is for everybody, as bell hooks asserts, then why provide the public with oft-cryptic, even bizarre works? Why not meet the audience halfway, so to speak, so as to bring the message to a greater number of people? Would doing so necessarily have to mean sacrificing the work?

– Tanekwah and Gabriella