The works that directly reference thangkas are included in “The Feminist Series” (1972–73) and “Slave Rape” (1972). In “The Feminist Series,” Ringgold scrambles East Asian iconography across typeface and style on the thangkas to trouble histories of belonging outside of the Euro-American canon of artmaking. The “Slave Rape” thangkas are disturbing for their representational focus on sexual exploitation and violence committed against Black women during the slave trade. Ringgold confronts our gaze directly by featuring her facial likeness onto these women as a way to connect and repair the temporal gap between the then and the now. Ringgold’s investment in linking the narrative of slavery as part of the symbology of America should not be overlooked. And yet, one walks away from the exhibition feeling that more could have been done to situate Ringgold’s interests in the representation of Black American culture through her work’s varied narratives and incorporation of other non-Euro-American cultural practices.
The exhibition’s absence of her early experiments paints Ringgold as a fully fledged artist with a set boundary in artmaking. For a survey exhibition, this might suffice, but for a retrospective, it leaves much to be desired. Missing from the exhibition are Ringgold’s early oil paintings from the 1950s, her later experiments in painting from the 2000s, and her more autobiographical pieces. One critical work of autobiography, Change: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight Loss Performance Story Quilt (1986), is on view in “Faith Ringgold: American People” and reveals a complicated side to Ringgold’s feminist practices. It narrates Ringgold’s experiences and musings with weight loss, using fat as both a physical component of the body and as a metaphor for an excess of critical thinking. The three-part quilt, which includes Change 2 (1988) and Change 3 (1991), is riddled with internalized patriarchal commentary on women’s bodies. We see the extent and burden of Ringgold’s upbringing bear itself against her body as a Black woman in the mid–20th century, where her expectations were to be a respectable, dutiful wife and mother.
"artist" - Google News
March 04, 2022 at 03:39AM
https://ift.tt/pfhv819
Faith Ringgold’s New Museum Retrospective Plays It Safe in Ways the Artist Has Not - Artsy
"artist" - Google News
https://ift.tt/XSFL6A9
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Faith Ringgold’s New Museum Retrospective Plays It Safe in Ways the Artist Has Not - Artsy"
Post a Comment