After All
My encounter - and that of most of us who do not live in or have the funds to travel to Europe - with these European works is purely via reproduction. I work from the premise that these works have been deemed to 'popular' and 'mainstream' enough to be marketable. They become vehicles to make observations about race, gender, the West and even 'high' vs 'low' culture. These artefacts have been altered/ subverted in some way, mostly with stitch. As well as the stitched wall pieces, the project also contains a mixed media sculpture.
I have a collection of about eighty miniature Italian gilt-framed silk prints, which were popular in the 1960s and 1970s. In a sense, these ‘low art’ reproductions are unwitting subversions of the original. I add/ embellish a more deliberate layer of subversion. As well as stitch, I use shweshwe and wax prints, African fabrics co-opted from previous colonial masters that add their own layer of complex history.
The subject matter of these reproductions are portraits of women or children, all with alabaster white skin, gently suffused by a blush, and European pastoral landscapes. All (from Mona Lisa to Millet) were painted at the time of European exploration. For me, all reference whiteness. Without whiteness there could be no Other and therefore no colonialism. Additionally, just as the land was the property of ruling class, so were these alabaster white women and children. I want to upend these notions.
While I respect what has come before, I believe that it should be challenged.
I have a collection of about eighty miniature Italian gilt-framed silk prints, which were popular in the 1960s and 1970s. In a sense, these ‘low art’ reproductions are unwitting subversions of the original. I add/ embellish a more deliberate layer of subversion. As well as stitch, I use shweshwe and wax prints, African fabrics co-opted from previous colonial masters that add their own layer of complex history.
The subject matter of these reproductions are portraits of women or children, all with alabaster white skin, gently suffused by a blush, and European pastoral landscapes. All (from Mona Lisa to Millet) were painted at the time of European exploration. For me, all reference whiteness. Without whiteness there could be no Other and therefore no colonialism. Additionally, just as the land was the property of ruling class, so were these alabaster white women and children. I want to upend these notions.
While I respect what has come before, I believe that it should be challenged.