@rachaelrankin5 Love how you dive into the theme of space, through physical location, organization of the exhibit, and subject-matter. Thinking about art occupying (our) space, emerging from the wall, and how that changes our relationship to it. Woolfalk’s work is especially effective #ARTH387
@chelseadukes13 I loved Zenele Muholi's toilet paper/glove work exploring excess, perhaps greed. Ironic that so many (gloved) hands violate social distance. Cool to follow art coming out of the pandemic, by pre-established artists and others utilizing time/digital media to make art #ARTH387
@Juliana61495125 Such a neat exhibition-- I love the theme "Strength in Vulnerability" to tie this diverse group of artists/works together. I particularly love the symbolism of the cell membrane you highlight in Saar's piece, and wonder how text could also play a role in the collection #ARTH387
In accordance with her pop-surrealist style, the composition is playful and stylized. However, the work speaks to the ways in which patterning, color, and symbols can adorn or mark the black body—referencing the history of style, patterning, and self-presentation.
The exhibition, “Clothing Blackness,” explores the ways in which a variety of contemporary artists approach the black body on canvas—a subject traditionally absent from art history—particularly through the use of patterning and textiles #ARTH387
A painting from her exhibition entitled “Seized the Imagination,” Nina Chanel Abney presents four black men “clothed” in patterned towels. Otherwise naked, their darker-toned bodies are highlighted by abstract, vibrant patterning of polka-dots and dollar signs.
But she substitutes his original figures with black women. She enters into a dialogue with art history, the absence of blackness, and black cultural representation particularly through her use of African-inspired patterning and textiles and the “clothing” of the black female body
Mickalene Thomas’s painting explores contemporary black female identity through her evocative use of vibrant color, alternative materials (rhinestones), and juxtaposed patterning inspired by her 1970s childhood. In the painting, she re-creates a famous work by Manet
Though the title suggests the subject is clothing herself, perhaps, in something that is not her own. In addition to the clothing, Sherald paints the skin with grey tones to present an almost archetypal figure—to capture black people in everyday life in a universal way
Very little of the subject’s skin is visible; her long skirt covers her legs completely, and she seems to be tugging her sweater tighter around her body as to further conceal her arms. The use of clothing here speaks to the history of fashion and textiles in black culture
The skin is yellowed and seems to be sprouting different types of floral vegetation, and the figure basks in a 3D, blooming, dream-like yellow world. Shimoyama challenges and complicates the concept of race and identity by “clothing” the black body in an unconventional way
Quilts embody a history of black textile artistry. Dynamic, vibrant, and interactive, this work engages physical space to speak to the history of black culture and its development in the present sphere with tissue paper, a beautifully fragile yet enduring material.
Quilts are typically something that “clothes” or covers someone while they sleep—symbols of comfort, protection, and craft. Though they are often not used to clothe oneself in public (often never leaving the foot of the bed except for the case of the Gee’s Bend quilts)