Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Exploring Black Womanhood at the Davis
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If you didn’t have a chance to see it at Dartmouth’s Hood Museum this summer, make sure to experience Black Womanhood: Images Icons and Ideologies of the African Body at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College next month.
On view from September 17 through December 14 and beginning with an Opening Celebration on September 17, this profound show, created for national exhibition by the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College explores icons and stereotypes of black womanhood through the display of over one hundred sculptures, prints, postcards, photographs, paintings, textiles, and video installations by artists from Africa, Europe, America, and the Caribbean.
Black Womanhood “examines the historical roots of a charged icon in contemporary art: the black female body,” writes the Hood cataloge. “Only through an exploration of the origins of black womanhood’s prevalent stereotypes can we begin to shed new light on the powerful revisionism occupying contemporary artists working with these themes today.”
Presented in three separate but intersecting sections, Black Womanhood reveals three perspectives - traditional African, Western colonial, and contemporary global - that have contributed to current ideas about black womanhood.
Providing an in-depth look at how images of the black female body have been created and used differently in Africa and the West, the exhibition explores themes such as ideals of beauty, fertility and sexuality, maternity and motherhood, and women’s identities and social roles.
Collectively, these overlapping perspectives penetrate the complex and interwoven relationships between Africa and the West, male and female, past and present - all of which have contributed to the inscription of meaning onto the black female body.
The first section of the show balances traditional African art objects made by both male and female artists. Juxtaposing traditional African with Western colonial-era images of African women, the second section reveals how photographs were used during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to promote and disseminate racist notions about African women and black womanhood.
The third section features works by contemporary artists from Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and the United States. New works by emerging South African artists Zanele Muholi, Senzeni Marasela, and Nandipha Mntambo will be exhibited for the first time in this country.
Edgar Allen Beem wrote about the show and his experience interviewing some of the artists represented like Kara Walker and Moroccan-born artist Lalla Essaydi in Yankee Magazine. “This is a must-see show, a landmark exhibition with resonance far beyond art and art history.” Don’t Miss It.
Black Womanhood: Images, Icons and Ideologies of the African Body
Davis Museum and Cultural Center
Wellesley College
Opening Celebration September 17, 2008 6-8pm
On view from September 17 - December 14
Comments
Sounds fabulous, Thanks for the heads-up. Marty
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