After the Deluge"Here I have gathered images from the distant and relatively recent past. All of the historical paintings and my images and typewritten texts predate the recent hurricanes, tsunamis, and to some extent, the global concern over rising sea levels. Paintings are neat containers of ideas about the commonplace nature of disaster. The genre painters featured in this book bring to the surface a subjective mix of terror, wish fulfillment, and mundane observation that is sometimes lost in a photography-driven world. I created this book because I was tired of seeing news images of (Black) people suffering presented as though it were a fresh, new thrilling subject. I brought together the art in this book (and the exhibition that preceded it) thinking like a draughtsman, perhaps absurdly so, as even the typewritten texts are from an ongoing series of text pieces I think of as drawings. The book is a series of thoughts of or related tangentially to Hurricane Katrina, and floods to come. It is a rumination on a fear of the deep and the problem of the shallow--'skin deep.' The book is the result of thinking like a Black woman, perhaps absurdly so, because to be 'Black' in the context of the book means broad sweeps of types of representation: stereotypical, archetypal, Negro, African, the color of nighttime, the color of cut paper, the feeling of engulfment, the sense of humor, the style of outrage. This is a book of pictures, pictures of things which engage our pleasure centers"--Artist's statement, dust jacket. |
Common terms and phrases
African AMISTAD artist Award Bandi BARBER bein book's born Boston brother bygones be bygones canvas Capt CAPTIVES classrooms cloth Collection of Rachel cut paper Deluge disaster Edouart engage our pleasure Failure of Containment father fear Ferrer fluidity framed text panels frightened and helpless goat Gouache and cut Havana Hurricane Katrina images inches Index of Artworks Island of Cuba Jean-Pierre Lehmann Jean-Pierre Lehmann PAGE Kara Walker knives lived Lomboko Mendi country Metropolitan Museum Montez Muck Muriel Kallis murky Museum of Art narrative Negro Newman Night Orleans paint board paper on paint pathologies perhaps absurdly pictures of things pleasure centers Rachel and Jean-Pierre Racist recent RISE RISE RISE RIZZOLI Ruiz Savagery sayin series American Primitives Series of 36 series of thoughts sisters skull slave sold Sons Spaniard stay Black story things which engage three children trying to destroy twin typewritten texts Untitled visual arts waterborne wives wound