Image Credit: The Whitney Museum of American Art
http://www.thewhitney.org
Artist Simone Leigh illuminates black womanhood through the black female body, constructing her from “craft” materials, through a narrative spanning centuries employing references and aesthetics including African diaspora and 20th century West African sculptures. In Leigh’s choice and artistic practice to construct the woman in a sculptural form, she deepens our understanding and connection with the three-dimensional object. Leigh says “The way you understand a sculpture is by relating it to your own body, so you feel its edges and its presence in space by that relationship.” As an educator and white woman, this perspective, especially from a female, black artist, really changed the way I perceive sculpture and my relationship to it, especially in figural work.
“Cupboard VIII” is a visual tactile experience, offering the viewer a “multilayered” representation of a black woman. She evokes materials like raffia and forms including a jug and Quonset hut. The artist’s visual language exposes her curiosity and examination “of the ways in which objects can embody and communicate specific cultural traditions and histories.” The head is represented by a jug and though there is no mouth, eyes, nose or chin, there is the suggestion of “rich, interior life,” her commanding presence, a vessel of knowledge. Her femininity is embodied in her exposed breasts, the extended arms with palms face upwards, an inviting embrace from her warm, brown skin.
This monumental work is my entryway into Leigh’s prolific work. She illustrates through the body the legacy of its past experiences and the ways history informs and shapes our presence, and our singular voices. I want to know more about these women and feel a sense of camaraderie in our disparate yet common feminine experiences.
Learn more about Simone Leigh at www.simoneleigh.com. You can see the “Cupboard VIII, 2018” in the exhibition “Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019” at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, until January, 2020.