AxME: Ellen Gallagher at Tate Modern

Walking into the first room of the exhibition AxME at Tate Modern in London, one cannot remain indifferent when viewing a photo that immortalizes the figure of Freud sketching a model. With a closer and knowledgeable gaze, one can recognize the face of the model as the artist herself posing in an evident Orientalist style.

With this short introduction, we are carried into the world of Ellen Gallagher (b. 1965) who is an American artist that deals with sex, femininity, white male artists, couch trips, models, and the male gaze.

The huge exhibition is organized in eleven rooms and presents a number of works from different periods. The following rooms are adorned with her big paintings of women in which plasticine forms their hair and caricatures of big lips and bug-eyes create their features. They are signs; they are signifiers of Gallagher's own visual vocabulary.

Ellen Gallagher has worked with diverse techniques and materials. Her work embraces painting, drawing, sculpture, collage and film -- often combining multiple media in a single piece. She became known for her minimalist works, alluding also -- with her caricature of lips, hair, and eyes -- to the vision and representation of black people in the “others” imagery.

The sensibility of her reappropriation of society’s imagery makes these works more than just aesthetically appealing. They acknowledge the anger and the sense of revenge against a label.

Curated by Juliet Bingham, the entire exhibition is a brilliant combination of politics, social classification, and identity.

Lorna Simpson's Gathered: Creating Myth and Mystery

A closeup of  a photo installation by Lorna Simpson at the Brooklyn Museum

      I recently had a chance to see Lorna Simpson: Gathered, now on display in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. With Gathered, the artist brings together unidentified photographs of African American women to create compelling narratives. According to the show's didactic, "Lorna Simpson: Gathered presents works that explores this Brooklyn-born artist's interests in the interplay between fact and fiction, identity and history. Through works that incorporate hundreds of original and found vintage photographs of African Americans that she collects from eBay and flea markets, Lorna Simpson undermines the assumption that archival materials are objective documents of history."

Lorna Simpson's installation of vintage photo booth pictures

   On one wall of the exhibition space, tiny vintage photo booth pictures of African American women are displayed in wooden frames, and spaced out so that when the viewer stands back, they almost look like a cloud. There are also small abstract ink pieces painted by the artist floating in between the photographs which are meant to represent the mystery of who these women are and what their lives were like. They are compared to that feeling of curiosity and loss one has when going through an old photo album and finding bits of paper and glue where pictures have been torn out. What piece of the puzzle is missing?

Preserving the Work of Black Feminists and Continuing the Legacy

Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Photo via New Black Man.

Recently while scrolling through posts on Tumblr I came across a link to an essay called Seek The Roots: An Immersive and Interactive Archive of Black Feminist Practice by Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Within the essay, Gumbs describes the painstaking process of researching and preserving the work of black feminists, and discusses why it is important to do so.

"It's a queer thing (and by queer I mean unlikely, magical, and against the current of the reproduction of oppression) that the work of a Black lesbian teacher mother warrior poet is even preserved on a college campus, so I take the event seriously. How does one ethically and effectively engage an archive of morbid thoughts and threatened utterances from the pens of dead Black feminists? What framework allows us to share traces of un-actualized projects, out-of-print masterpieces, and forgotten victories?"

Audre Lorde. Photo via http://cache.eb.com.

Reading Seek The Roots made me appreciate the progress of technology. It has allowed for people to build broader networks around a particular interest or cause, and leveled the playing field in terms of access to information. I remember reading books like Black Feminist Thought, This Bridge Called My Back (which is sadly now out of print), and Home Girls in college when I was on a hunt for feminist perspectives that spoke to my experience as a woman of color. The books themselves were incredible resources, but it would have meant even more to have a dialog around them that was outside the traditional university classroom setting. Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a member of The Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind, a North Carolina based grassroots project which aims to put theory into practice and engage the community around the ideas of black feminists.

Aisha Cousins Creates a Performance Experience

Aisha Cousins jumping rope with braided hair for Diva Dutch.

Aisha Cousins is a Brooklyn-based performance artist whose work is unique in the sense that it creates community. As an artist who is "committed to reaching audiences that do not normally feel comfortable in museums or galleries." You're more likely to see her work on the streets of Brooklyn or Harlem or in a local business than in a gallery space. And the best part about Aisha's performance work is that anybody can join in. In fact, that's what enriches the experience. In the following interview, she talks about her most recent projects.

Please tell me about your Diva Dutch performance piece (braiding long extensions into womens' hair and inviting people to jump rope with it). What was your initial inspiration for the piece, and how has it evolved since it first started? Where have you performed Diva Dutch? Did people receive it differently based on what location you were in?
Diva Dutch started as a sort of rites-of-passage for my 30th birthday. I had been trying to make myself over -wearing high heels, makeup, etc.- so that I looked more "womanly" because I was tired of being mistaken for a teenager. I can't wear heels though, and I'm not big on makeup. It was torture. Finally I said "Look, I'm turning 30. All my older female friends say the great thing about the 30's is you stop worrying what other people think of you and start living for yourself. I should just embrace whatever it is that actually makes me a woman and be happy." For me, the best thing about being an adult is having the freedom and the resources to do all the things people wouldn't let you do as a kid, so I kind of ran with that and Diva Dutch was born.

Braiding hair for a Diva Dutch performance

Diva Dutch performance in Brooklyn

Since then, Diva Dutch has changed a good deal in purpose and meaning. When I first performed it on my stoop in BedStuy, I was in a neighborhood I grew up in, so it felt like that action of jumping rope, and also the hair braiding, resonated across space and time. As I jumped, I couldn't help but picture the other black women, who like me had once been little girls and jumped rope in front of their houses all along the block... and throughout the neighborhood. And I pictured all the little black girls before and after us. It seemed like something we had in common -the grandmoms, the aunties, the big sisters, the daughters, and the granddaughters. The same was true for the hairbraiding. We were very purposefully passing these acts of joyfulness and beauty on to each new generation.

Reclaiming (Her)Story: Drawing Strength from the Past

Contralto singer Mabel Ritchardson in San Francisco, circa late 1930s.

For the past two years, I have been researching the history of my family. I have spent hours rummaging through old photographs and documents, constructing family trees, and scouring the internet for information about my ancestors. What an incredible journey it has been! The more I learn about my family's past, the more I long to know. The stories of the women in my family are particularly compelling. I am fascinated by the story of my great-grandmother, Mabel Ritchardson, who was a noted contralto singer in San Francisco during the 1930's. She performed pieces by Bach and Brahms, as well as spirituals, all while raising her six children in the city's Western Addition neighborhood.

A review of Ritchardson's performance in The San Francisco Spokesman reads, "Mrs. Ritchardson scored another triumph in her career when she was presented in an intimate musicale, by a group of artists at the fashionable Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. Mrs. Ritchardson, the only colored on the program was introduced as a cultural leader of her race. The audience was spell-bound while she sang "Come Let Us All This Day" by Bach. For encore she sang "Vittoria Mio Core" by Carissima in Italian. She appeared later on the program with a group of Negro spirituals which were enthusiastically received."

I found this review of her work, along with programs, letters, and photos Mabel saved from her singing career. I was inspired by her dedicated pursuance of her craft, especially since this was an era where a woman's "place" was considered to be in the home. In spite of the obstacles facing all women, and especially Black women, she made her dreams a reality.

Karen Seneferu: An Ancient Aesthetic in Contemporary Art

Karen Seneferu is an emerging talent in the San Francisco Bay Area art scene. Her work is generating a lot of excitement, and deservedly so. Although she has humbly referred to herself as a "young artist," there are some artists whose work is prolific and beyond their years. Karen Seneferu's mixed media work brings to mind creative heavyweights like Betye Saar and Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson. Like Robinson and Saar, Seneferu utilizes found materials and creates objects that are steeped in history, all with with incredible craftsmanship and intricate detail. Her most recent exhibit was Crossroad, an installation at Krowswork Gallery in Oakland, California.

Crossroad installation by Karen Seneferu

Seneferu's installations are always a feast for the spirit and the senses. Upon stepping into the small dark room that housed Crossroad, the viewer was greeted with a series of intricate altars and objects. Much of what was placed in the room was in deep hues of red and ebony, the colors associated with Eleggua, the trickster deity of Nigeria's Yoruba religion. Eleggua is said to preside over the crossroads of life, and acts as a gatekeeper.