Week 7: apply and reflect

 

Wangechi Mutu,  The Seated 1, 2019 
Source



“The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators by Bell Hooks reflects how Black women watch movies with a critical eye. Black women critique what they see because, they have been taught to gaze in different way. Their gaze comes with power of changing society, and it has been controlled. So, they do not represent Black women in the most favorable light. They are related to mammies and or poor ghetto girls. Mass media has dismissed black women just by the color of their skin.

This has left Black women with no choice but to look at movies, television, or any mass media with a biased opinion towards what they are seeing. Hooks explains this by saying, “when most Black people in the United States first had the opportunity to look at film and television, they did so fully aware that mass media was a system of knowledge and power reproducing and maintaining white supremacy.” Which justifies the Black female gaze.  White supremacy has seeped into Black movies. The most notorious in the recent years was, “Straight Out of Compton” which pushed Black women to the related roles. And placed white women above Black women, providing that white women are more desirable in a white supremacy world with a male dominant gaze. So Black women do not stop the critical gaze even when the movie is focused on the Black audience.

However, there is a gaze that can uplift Black women. They do not have to be the roles they are serotyped in to. They can break free from this form. And the artist Wangechi Mutu, a Kenyan artist, is showing Black women they can. The scale she is presenting them gives authority to powerful women of African and African descent women. “Mutu stages a feminist intervention, liberating the caryatid form her traditional duties and her secondary status.”2 Mutu, gives a feminist view that also focuses on race. Since Black women have not reaped the benefit of the feminist wave. Mutu, made four statues to line the facade of the New York’s, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her exhibition title of her show, “The New Ones, Will Free Us” offers hope to the Black woman.  Each statute was inspired by custom of a specific high society of African women. The might of the African women casted in bronze, sitting at seven feet tall resembles the value of Black women.  Black women do not have to be critical when they are displayed to have value by other Black women. Black female artist deserves to be seen not just for their color but for their value. 

1.) bell hooks, The Oppositional Gaze, in Black Looks: Race and Representation, 115-31 Boston: South End Press, 1992. 

2.)“The Facade Commission: Wangechi Mutu The New Ones, Will Free Us.” metmuseum.org, 2019. https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/facade-commission-wangechi-mutu. 

Comments

  1. Jamie TorrezOctober 11, 2020 at 4:30 PM

    Hi Rachel!

    I totally agree with the sentiment of, “Black female artists deserve to be seen not just for their color but for their value.” I then see it becoming a matter of how we get there, especially when so much is dismissed based on race, gender, and even unfamiliarity. The artwork you chose really seems to support this in the way it subverts the typical expectation. Do you think the creation of more artwork like this would help?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rachel ChapmanOctober 11, 2020 at 10:21 PM

      I believe with all my being that artwork like Wangechi Mutu uplifts black women can help. Artwork can add to familiarity in a positive light. And that helps combat negative thoughts towards someone that is unfamiliar. I also do not want black female artists to be used as tokens to art museums. That why I stated not just for their color because that is what happen to black artist.

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  2. AshtonOctober 12, 2020 at 9:41 PM

    You mentioned Straight Out of Compton which I personally haven't seen but what do you think of Black Panther and Jordan Peele's movies? Do you think those have good representation for black women in the modern times? Those are some cool looking statues though.

    ReplyDelete

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