Celebrating the Woman: Renee Cox

One of the most controversial African-American artists working today, Renee Cox has used her own body, both nude and clothed, to celebrate black womanhood and criticize a society she often views as racist and sexist.

She was born on October 16, 1960, in Colgate, Jamaica, into an upper middle-class family, who later settled in Scarsdale, New York.

From the very beginning, her work showed a deep concern for social issues and employed disturbing religious imagery. In It Shall Be Named (1994), a black man's distorted body made up of eleven separate photographs hangs from a cross, as much resembling a lynched man as the crucified Christ.

One intriguing piece of work that I found was her representation of the modern "Hottentot Venus". This historical figure was Sara Baartman, a captured African woman brought to America to be exploited. She was exploited not only for scientific analysis of her genitalia but displayed as an overly sexual, deviant being. Even when Sara Baartman's curves were perceived as ugly and animalistic, Renee Cox celebrates it as beauty.


But her next photographic series would be less engaging for some people and create a firestorm of controversy. In the series Flipping the Script, Cox took a number of European religious masterpieces, including Michelangelo's David and The Pieta, and reinterpreted them with contemporary black figures.


The photograph that created the most controversy when it was shown in a black photography exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City in 2001 was Yo Mama's Last Supper. It was a remake of Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper with a nude Cox sitting in for Jesus Christ, surrounded by all black disciples, except for Judas who was white.

Many Roman Catholics were outraged at the photograph and New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani called for the forming of a commission to set "decency standards" to keep such works from being shown in any New York museum that received public funds.


Cox responded by stating "I have a right to reinterpret the Last Supper as Leonardo da Vinci created the Last Supper with people who look like him.The hoopla and the fury are because I'm a black female. It's about me having nothing to hide."

Edmonia Lewis

Edmonia Lewis was a neoclassical African American and Native American sculptor. Her first rpominent work was done in Italy which makes her a woman of the black Diaspora. She lived in the mid to late 1800's and was first recognized int he 1860's and the 1870's for her work.

Her sculptures often revolved around Biblical themes or themes of freedom as well as famous American abolitionists. While most of her work is lost, she often depicted African, African American, and Native American peoples in her work.

Arguably her most famous work is the "Death of Cleopatra". Shown below.

Edmonia Lewis was the first artist to actually celebrate her racial identity. Many were shocked by her artistic achievement and this accomplishment seemed to mortify those who claimed that Black people lacked the capacity for intelligence and fine art. Many people even tried to prove that the work she had done wasn't really done by her. For her time, she broke through the barriers of Whiteness being dominant around her.

It has been reported that Lewis was a lesbian and in her generation gay and lesbian representation in the visual arts had just begun to emerge. Artists that were homosexual existed all along, but prior to the late twentieth century, they were not as apparent and their work did not display their sexuality. This is probably because a great deal of homophobia was still around and homo-eroticism that may occur from knowing that Lewis was a lesbian. Her work may have not been appreciated the same.

The Art of Sexuality

Lesbian representation in the visual arts created by people of the African Diaspora emerged most clearly in the late twentieth century as artists began to explore issues specific to gender and sexuality. Artists attracted to members of their own sex certainly existed all along, but prior to the late twentieth century their visibility was not nearly as apparent and their work did not deal explicitly with themes relating to their sexuality.

Drawing on a long tradition of autobiography in African-American history, however, contemporary artists rely heavily on self-portraiture, which almost necessarily involves the exploration of sexual and affection issues. Perhaps because African-American culture has traditionally been unaccepting of homosexuality, many artists of color remain "in the closet" longer than their counterparts in the majority white culture. Thus, many of these artists find themselves dealing with issues of external and internal homophobia.

Painting with Humor: Chris Ofili

Chris Ofili was born in Nigeria and raised in Great Britain. His work is referenced as diverse as traditional African ar, images from popular culture, and hip-hop music. Chris Ofili’s paintings explore contemporary black urban experience His intricately layered works combine bead-like dots of paint, inspired by cave painting in Zimbabwe, with collaged images from popular magazines.
Since 1992 Chris Ofili has included dried elephant dung. Combined with his parodies of 1970s black exploitation or blaxploition movies, comic book super heroes and “gangsta” rap music, his work addressed a complex matrix of issues that challenge sexual and racial stereotypes.

One of his painting, The Holy Virgin May, a depiction of the Virgin Mary, was an issue in a lawsuit between the mayor of New York City and the Brooklyn Museum of Art when it was exhibited there in 1999 as a part of the “Sensation” exhibit.

The painting depicted a black African Mary surrounded by images from blazploitation movies and close-ups of female genitalia cut from pornographic magazines, and elephant dung. Following the scandal surrounding this painting, Bernard Goldberg ranked Ofili #86 in 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America.

More of Chris Ofili:

"Devil's Pie" 2004

Devil is a carnival character from Trinidad and Tobago; Pie refers to the highly sexualized figures in the piece and still celebrates the different colors and shapes of the women of color. The "Red Woman" is the fair skinned black female.

"Annunciation" 2006

Distorts the biblical themes of the Virgin Mary and Angel Gabriel. Demonstrates the strangely rough sexuality of Gabriel as he performs the "immaculate conception". Moved away from the traditionally white association, and suggested the he Africanises the angel figure to subvert our preconceptions of purity.

Alek Wek: Beauty Redefined

I decided to move my search onto a more recently discovered black model and found Alek Wek. Elle Magazine chose Alek Wek for the cover of the November issue in 1997.

Alek was considered a risk at first: a dark-skinned African woman on the cover of one of the most infamous American magazines did not, theoretically, sell issues. Now why is that? It's not like its the first time anyone has seen a Black woman, but I guess was still a soft issue even during the 90's.


However, the result.. a monumental reader responded, with letters to the editor from women and men, ecstatic about seeing the standards of beauty in fashion redefined.

Alek was born in southern Sudan, in 1977. When a civil war erupted in the mid 1980's, Wek talked her way onto a military plane that led her out of Khartoum, and then to England as a refugee. Her transition from the Sudan school in London was not pleasant. She was constantly teased because of her "African" look. Her long legs, dark skin, and clipped hair adorning a near-sculptural head excited interest, placing her features in the exotic "tribal" category.


Some find fault with Wek's look, seeing her rise as evidence of a new form of stereotype from the other end of the spectrum, the "primitive" or "exotic" tag.


Elle's editor, Gilles Bensimon shot the cover, placing Wek in white on a white background. "With starkly contrasting colors". He was trying to project the idea that "Nobody is out, everybody is in" and said "I thought, if I was African-American, I never would see myself in the magazines"


This related to a topic discussed in class. That whiteness is not always invisible in aesthetic representations. Whiteness becomes visible only if you've got blackness" This whiteness is more than just a color, it is a race as well and can be seen as positive, beauty, purity, innocence, and percection. I love Bensimon's arrangement of Wek in white, on a white background because he is allowing the world to view a dark-skinned person as pure, innocent, and in fact, beautiful.

Wek says "In my village there is no problem because we all look the same. Here there is so much difference in skin-- so much is thought about it, and that's sad."


Now that is something to think about..

Naomi Sims: The Great Ambassador

I was looking through a stack of my magazines the other night and noticed that most of these models were white. Where are the Asians? The Hispanics? The African Americans? I decided to look into it. I began to search for the first black supermodel and came to find many titles point towards the recent death of a woman named Naomi Sims.

Naomi Sims was the first black supermodel. She was first featured on the cover of Ladies' Home Journal in 1968. What struck me as odd was that she was described as nearly six-feet tall, with ebony skin, and African features.

What exactly are considered African features? Does this mean that she is darker than white people or the fair skinned black women? Or more tribal? How can one's features be categorized based off of their ethnic origin.

Naomi Sim's mother gave her away at the age of 10. Coming from a broken family, she spent time in a group home and then was raised by a working-class black couple in Pittsburgh. There, she lived in a home with another foster child, a younger girl in the house, who was of a lighter color. Naomi recalled that the younger foster daughter was treated like a daughter while she felt more like a helper.

As one of the four stereotypes of Black women discussed in an article by Woodward and Mastin, "the Black woman is characterized as a loyal domestic servant to White people." Perhaps this explains why Naomi was treated more like a worker to that family than a daughter.

Now this view on her god-given skin color followed her into her career. Modeling agencies constantly turned her down in the late '60's because her skin was too dark but Sims finally convinced photographer Gosta Peterson to capture her for the cover of The New York Times Magazine's "Fashions of the Times" in 1967. This must've been a great move for Peterson at this time since he was photographing models such as Twiggy along with deciding to capture Naomi Sims.

From an article by Tate, "During the 1970's, black girls growing up in Britain were influenced by dominant notions of female attractiveness which appear in their desire for 'long flowing hair, lighter skin and aquiline features'". Along with this, early Europeans, after first entering the

continent of Africa, connected the attributes of these Africans with "savagery, bestiality, lecherousness, and being uncivilized" (Tate). I admire Naomi for her strength in surpassing these views on her.

Naomi was the first... she was the great ambassador for all black people. She broke down all the social barriers. She was able to break through in a time where models were mainly all white and show that her color did not define who she was as a savage and uncivilized and allowed her to be part of that era.

Naomi's migration from her foster home into the world of modeling let her learn that she is not to be represented and treated as merely an object, and that her black female body can be in the same realm as the white female body.

-Amy Huang