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Indepth Arts News:
"Bearing Witness: Contemporary Works by African American Women Artists"
1999-06-20 until 1999-08-15
Museum of Fine Arts Houston
Houston, TX,
USA United States of America
Bearing Witness: Contemporary
Works by African American Women
Artists, features works by
twenty-four prominent,
contemporary African American
women including Howardena Pindell,
Betye and Alison Saar, Faith
Ringgold, Carrie MaeWeems,
Elizabeth Catlett, Rachelle Puryear,
and native Texan Jean Lacy. The
approximately 50 works in the
exhibition, ranging from the Haitian
vévé paintings of Lois Mailou Jones
to the gripping contemporary
photographic essays of Carrie Mae
Weems, chronicle the contributions
of four generations of African
American women artists. Through
prints, drawings, mixed-media
installations, and sculpture
(complemented by works from the
MFAH's permanent collection), these
artists explore issues of gender,
ethnicity, religion, and history -
topics pertinent to all people, and to
African American women in
particular.
Two of the most critical events in recent history–the civil rights movement
and the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s–influenced all aspects of
American cultural development in the subsequent decades, but were of
particular importance to contemporary African American women. These
women found themselves situated at the intersection of the two movements,
yet also, paradoxically, excluded in many ways from each. Finding it
necessary to forge a third way–unique expressions that represent their specific
and complex experience–African American women artists have produced
creative statements that are innovative not only in style and media, but also in
the revolutionary observations they present. These artists choose to lay their
own imaginative paths into the future, often while simultaneously looking
back to the extraordinary heritage of the creative African American women
who precede them–ancestors whose own artistic expression often found
outlets in nontraditional media such as quilting, beading, and pottery.
The artists and works in this remarkable collection are inspiring and
thought-provoking, and both offer feats of resistance and empowerment.
Each piece has its own vital and singular story to tell, and yet, when brought
together, these works also provide an extraordinary collective voice that
resonates beyond the limits of specific perception, and articulates the
boundless range of human experience.
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