Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body

Black Womanhood is an exhibit dealing with cultural ideas about the black female body. It explores the perceptions and stigma around this subject from the archeological sculpture that ideas of African tribal realities were based on to contemporary international multimedia works about the topic. The exhibit, within the black female context, deals with many other issues such as motherhood, sexuality, social requirements and effects on black women. The show was powerful and witty.
Most of the wit is due to iconoclast Renee Cox. The two pieces she showed were the best pieces there. Her Hot-En-Tot piece was a powerful mockery of the world’s fascination with what is perceived to be the universal black female body. Her piece is a response to a wretched story of Sarah Baartman, a 19 year old African woman who was taken from Africa, showcased as a freak for her body shape (which was very different from that of the British) and eventually had her body parts showcased in jars in a French museum. She was known for her giant buttocks and vagina. Her vagina was returned to South Africa for a proper burial as late as 1994. She is the symbol of the West’s attitude towards black female sexuality and humanity. So Miss Cox decided to put on a bikini made of plastic with which is the shape of the Hotte-En –Tot’s body and look seductively at the camera. The idea is to re-sexualize Sarah Baartman, who had been turned into a specimen for study. It is also taking a stab at the idea that all black women look like that. Cox’s body, being thin and small, contrasts dramatically with the Sarah Baartman bikini, contradicting the stereotype. Her other piece wins the prize. It is truly hilarious, sexy and the ultimate fuck you to stuffy Caucasian art history. Baby Back (2001) depicts Cox, with her back to the camera, lying on a sensual yellow day bed, with hot red patent leather shoes on, mimicking Ingres’ famous Grande Odalisque (1814) – but instead of a duster, she holds a very intimidating whip. So first, having turned her back of the viewer, she is no longer objectified and couldn’t care less about them. Second, she is sexing it up with the shoes and her posture. However, no one dares come near her because of that whip. Its her essentially torturing the viewers and addressing the centuries during which black women were not holding the whip and were under the whip in sexual interactions as well as everything else. This historical context gives her even more power. It feels even more likely that she would use it because black women never got to. Besides the amazing conveyance of concept, this photograph is formally perfect. The color dynamic and a-symmetry is to die for – and the yellow color of that bed – mmmmmmm.
Wangechi Mutu’s Double Fuse plays with the lioness idea of black women. Her half human half animal characters are very sexy but have leopard print all over their bodies. This is an interesting choice given the stereotype of African women as animalistic. Cox and her, however, are reclaiming and sexualizing stereotypes in their pieces and its very effective.
Kara Walker unfortunately only had a popup book in the show from 1997. As usual, though the beautiful paper work and composition draws you in and then you can’t sleep for weeks due to what you make out of the confrontational Rorschach shadows. Bernie Searle had an interesting piece from Traces for the Color Me Series is a series of photos in two rows suspended from the ceiling. The back row is photos of her naked and covered in spices of different colors. Then the front row was photos of each of those same spice covering colors, but she had gotten up and left a spice angel on the white ground. “The presentation and absence of the body in the work points to the idea that identity is non-static”. Writes Bernie Searle
The show is very intense and very funny. Tears and cackles alike will be induced. The formal and installation atmosphere is also quite stunning.
Davis Museum and Cultural Center September 27th-December 14th, 2008 www.wellesley.edu/DavisMuseum