Week 6: Exhibitions

 

              When an image is stolen it loses its originality. The image is not longer pure it is tainted with another person’s perspective. The image is consumed by another’s thoughts and options that have no context to what the image meant. The Black community has suffered and continues to suffer from their own stole image. Black women are not display the way a black woman would see herself. She is displayed through the eyes of a slave holder; someone how does not see her value as a person but as property. “Re-presenting Black Womanhood” an exhibition put on display by Winterthur Museum gives black women a say in their own image. It confronts the racist and sexist gaze that is placed on black women.  Black women need a personable gaze intended to show the humanity of them. Not to display them as happy servant content with their living with no freedom.  John Lewis Krimmel in the exhibition shows how conflicting a stolen image is. Krimmel depicted a black woman as a black woman in Woman in a Blue Dress. The woman is posing for the watercolor sketch, allowing Krimmel to see her and represent her in his personal journal. Where the stolen image of a black female in The Quilting Frolic (1813) done by Krimmel is misrepresenting.  The card under the painting explains “The chaotic assembly circles an unknown young Black female caricature depicted in a position of servitude. Her gaze is fixed on the dominant white male, and her expression suggest her contentment”. 1 This is not the feeling of a slave focused against her will to be a servant.  How can someone depict another person without their say of how they should be represented? And not understand the effect it has on them.  Stolen images harm the people in the images.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland disgraced themselves by planning to show  the artist Shaun Leonardo to display his artwork of police brutality.  Where the museum and the artist disgraced themselves is the stolen image of Tamir Rice. The article “Samaria Rice, Mother of Tamir Rice, Speaks Out About Art Depicting Her Son After Canceled Exhibition in Cleveland” written by Jasmine Weber. The article explains this is against the will of the person the gave life to Tamir Rice. Shaun Leonardo artwork of Tamir Rice was a charcoal drawing of Tamir in his last moment of having a gun pointed at him by a police officer. Shaun Leonardo looting the tragedy of Tamir Rice and not seeing him   as human but as a  target.  The museum did not seek the Black community out and ask them how they felt about Black bodies being brutalized in art.  Weber quotes Amanda King a black staff member that was ignored by her employer.

There are a lot of people who really do believe in that kind of idea of empathetic response that people will have to artwork, and in particular looking at images of Black suffering,” she said. “And it can do that at times, and it also can do other things. It can become a type of pornographic looking, as well, and become a very violent space.

The last two sentence show that stolen image of Blackness can be destroyed and smeared when Black people are not involved in their own image.

John Lewis  Kimmel, Woman in A Blue Dress, 1812-1814 

John Lewis Kimmel, The Quilting Frolic, 1813 

Source

1.)Ciskanik, Anne. “Re-Presenting Balck Womanhood .” Representing Black Womanhood . Accessed 2020. https://preview.shorthand.com/GxDehxf9lv1QItBZ.

2.)Weber, Jasmine. “Samaria Rice, Mother of Tamir Rice, Speaks Out About Art Depicting Her Son After Canceled Exhibition in Cleveland.” Hyperallergic, July 16, 2020. https://hyperallergic.com/573053/moca-cleveland-the-breath-of-empty-space/.