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."