Kara Walker, Frida Kahlo, Marina Abramovic,
Alma Thomas and Njedika Akunyili Crosby fearlessly challenges/challenged the
status quo through their practice. These artist span across different generations.
Kara
Walker
Kara
Walker is a contemporary artist who through silhouette illustrations, explore
the history of the American south. Kara Walker, to an extent, can be considered
as a history painter but with a disruptive twist to the way she tells her
stories. She draws from sources such as slave testimonials and historical
novels to bring her illustrations(stories) to life. One characteristic of her
illustrations is that it usually features mammies, pickaninnies, and women in a
host of stereotyped situations that are frequently violent and sexual in
nature. She brilliantly employs the use of fact and fiction to paint a picture
that is multi-layered in its meaning. Her silhouette characters are made out of
cut papers as opposed to the traditional “Oil or acrylic on canvas”. In recent
times she has used other mediums to articulate her thoughts when necessary. An
example is her sculpture piece, “A Subtlety/the Marvelous Sugar Baby” was
a site-specific sculpture piece/project
produced in the Domino Sugar refining Pant located in Williamsburg Brooklyn, New York. The monumental sculpture
was produced to reflect the sites charged history both literally and
metaphorically before it got demolished.When she started making waves right
from graduate school as an artist, the audience was divided with regards to her
work. A fraction of the audience condemned her work because they felt her work was offensive. Many questioned
her approach. Thus, was her work a “step backwards or forward with regards to
racial politics”.
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Kara
Walker
ASublety
(Sugar Sphinx)
2014
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Frida Kahlo
Frida
Kahlo is a Mexican artist who used art to express all the physical challenges
she faced through her life. She mostly painted portraits of herself and her paintings
are considered to be autobiographical. Her paintings always has elements of nature and her Mexican heritage.
She intentionally chose to dress in traditional Mexican cloths despite the
availability of modern cloths from her time. In her teens Frida Kahlo was
involved in a trolley accident from which
she fractured her Spinal cord and pelvis. She became paralyzed as a result . She began painting
during her recovery from the accident. Although Frida Kahlo never considered herself a surrealist, her work to
some extent has characteristics of the
surrealist painters. A dreamlike feel and taping into the subconscious to
create works of art. Her works are also often layered with symbolic elements. One
of her most famous work is “ The two Fridas” The painting is considered to be
her largest known canvas painting. In the
painting you see two sitting portraits of Frida Kahlo.One of the sitting
Frida is dressed in a modern dress whiles the other Freda is in a
traditional Mexican dress.
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Frida
Kahlo
The
two Fridas
1939
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Marina Abramovic
During
the postmodernist era artist sought to break down the unified(though hardly
monolithic) traditions of modernism. It also sought to critique how the media
positions the mainstream popular culture. Also, the artist began to question
the exclusionism of modernism and probe many thought-provoking questions. Such
as “What art is, who is for, and who has the authority to create art.” As well
as the form it takes. Performance art was an answer to some of these questions.
Marina Abramovic was one of the pioneers of this art form. She aimed to break
free from the traditional “ object-based art materials” such as painting on a
canvas. Marina Abramovich started using her own body as her medium of choice.
This was to “cut down the distance between the artist and the audience.As a
performance artist, she often places herself in great danger performing
injurious routines to push the limit of her body. This is exactly what she did
in one of her famous performance called “rhythm 0”. This one of her extreme
performance. The work was a response to the perception that performance artist
is just exhibitionist and that they were doing it for the attention. She wanted
to see how far the public will go if she put her self/life on the line.
 |
Marina
Abramovic
Rhythm
0
1974
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Alma
Thomas
Alma Thomas is an African
American abstract expressionist painter and an educator. She is
considered as one of the greatest African American painters of all time. As a
result of racial tension, her family moved to Washinton DC in 1907. She attended Howard University and
was the first person to graduate there with a fine arts degree. Initially, she
entered as a home economics student and later switched. She previously under an appreciated artist
who is recently celebrated and recognized for her unique colorful paintings.
Thomas then earned her master in art education at Columbia University. Her
early works were representational in manner but gradually switched to abstract.
The style she painted in has similarities or characteristics to byzantine and
African paintings. She was criticized for her abstract style as opposed to
other African American artists who employed figuration and symbolism to fight
in oppression the time .Her painting the Eclipse is a perfect example of her
interest in colour and composition. Thomas painted mostly with acrylics but
also watercolour for her studies. Thomas
took inspiration from effects of light, flowers, atmosphere or nature in
general to create her paintings. The colours in her paintings radiate. Her treatment
of colour in her painting reflects her life long devotion and study of colour
theory.
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Alma
Thomas
The
Eclipse
1970
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Njedika
Akunyili Crosby
Njedika
Akunyili Crosby is a Nigerian born artist who currently lives and works in Los
Angelos. She moved to America when she was sixteen when her Mum won the United
States immigration lottery. Whiles following her parents' footsteps, her dad a
surgeon and mum a Pharmacologist by studying biology. When she was in college,
out of curiosity, Crosby took an art class and never looked back. As a visual
artist, she explores themes such as identity, immigration, memory, and Cosmopolitan
life. She embraces and explores the cultural collision of her home country,
Nigeria and her current country of residence, America. As she puts it
"[she], always still considers Nigeria as her home" even though she
lives in America. The themes she interrogates is very relevant in these current
times on a global scale. Crosby's work/paintings touch on personal,
socio-political, as well as complexities embedded in one's identity as a result
of immigration,. Using herself and her husband as the start of a nuanced
conversation, she combines/collages photo transfer of images from an archive of
family photos; This mostly consists of images from her days in Nigeria together
with that of her family members. She uses this combination of pictures from her
native home and that of her present life as a starting point for her creative
explorations. There are many layers in how she identifies herself, and
this according to her broaden or increases with time. The layers, she talks
about is literarily evident in her works as she superimposes several elements
in her paintings. |
Njedika Akunyili Crosby
Super Blue Omo
2016. Acrylic, charcoal, colored
pencil, collage on paper
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