Black Women/Black Lives explores art and action, unifying narratives of resistance, empowerment and invention among generations of artists and activists working within various female-driven political moments. Beginning in the 1960s, black feminist thinkers sought alternative explanations for the persistence of inequality in the face of racial prejudice, misogyny, and exclusion from the predominantly white Women’s Liberation Movement. Arguing that sexism, racism, and class oppression are all inextricably linked, these feminists were not only concerned with establishing equality, but with dismantling the power structures that had traditionally discounted black women.

     From this point onward, art became a central avenue for black feminists to critically invert these oppressive structures. In the history of Western art, frequently fetishized representations of the black female form silently served to dehumanize black women and reinforce the subjugation of all peoples of African descent. Challenging this picture, artists working in conjunction with political groups—from the Black Panthers to Black Lives Matter—have presented black women in positions of control, dignity, and beauty, turning visual representations of the black female experience into vital mechanisms for social change. However, women were not only of symbolic importance in these movements, as aspects of black femininity enabled women to fundamentally shape activist goals, placing issues relating to gender equality, motherhood, and beauty politics at the forefront of political action.

     Presenting art, material culture, and music in dialogue, Black Women/Black Lives examines the ways in which artists have politicized the visibility of black women in a dominant white society and utilized it for the advancement of civil rights. This exhibition offers a gendered lens through which to view late 20th and 21st-century activism committed to generating political consciousness and creates new perspectives on the crucial agency of black women in gender equality and black solidarity movements since the Civil Rights era.

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Artists: Bob Adelman, Romare Bearden, Claire Beckett, Bruce Davidson, Emory Douglas, Wanda Ewing, Lauryn Hill, Abbey Lincoln, Jacob Lawrence, OSPAAAL, Faith Ringgold, Lorna Simpson, Solange, Renée Stout, and material culture from Interference Archive.

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Curated by:

Rose Bishop ’17

Natasha Siyumbwa ’17

Jenna Wendler ’17

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Anchored by recent gifts from Gund Gallery Board Member David Horvitz ‘74 and his wife Francie Bishop Good to the Gund Gallery Collection. 

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The Gund Gallery exhibitions and programs are made possible, in part, by the Gund Gallery Board of Directors and the Ohio Arts Council.

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http://www.thegundgallery.org/2016/11/black-womenblack-lives/

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Image: Reneé Stout, A Vision I Can't Forget, 1999. Lithograph, 31 x 21 in (sheet) Gund Gallery Collection, Samuel B. Cummings Art Fund Purchase. Photo courtesy of the Gund Gallery.