CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY IN AMERICA
MONTCLAIR ART MUSEUM EXHIBITION
CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY
The construction of identity is the forming or development of the many parts that can make up the whole. Identity can be very personal or applied to a group. The actual process of “construction” would insist that it happens over time. This can happen through different events and realizations of oneself. How one handles different situations, interests, family, cultural background, environment, values, social class and relationships can all contribute to or influence the formation of identity. Identity can change over the years and can be influenced by other people’s views of you.
CARRIE MAE WEEMS, Untitled from the Sea Island Series (Ebo Landing), 1992
Carrie Mae Weems has built a legacy of representations of the African American experience. In Weems', Untitled from the Sea Island Series (Ebo Landing), 1992, she photographs Ebo Landing, a legendary place in the Gullah Region along the Georgia and South Carolina coast, where a group of Africans bravely walked into the sea and drowned themselves as a resistance to becoming slaves. The unique Cultural Identity of the Gullahs has been centered in this piece. The Gullahs are very different and have their own legacy almost and outside the Black American experience. They are one of the few Black regions that have held on to a large part of their African identity. Weems is showing the historic passing down of the legacy and tradition through the remembrance of this place. The scene in the photos looks calm and still almost like time has stopped there.
"A picture is worth a thousand words." Carrie Mae Weems’ 1996 Framed by Modernism, consists of three photographs of a scene with with a white man and a Black woman both posing differently in each photo. The woman, who is nude is in the background and the man, who is fully clothed, is in the foreground, both seeming connected and yet disconnected. The physical expression of while she seems to be relaxed yet holding back. The spacial differences don't just show in the physical distances but how society places women, often behind the man. She is in a more confined space, cramped in the corner, but making the best of her space, much like women's spaces, more particularly Black women and women of color's spaces. Where as the white man although seemingly uncomfortable and worried has all of the space out front. In Judith Howard's, Social Psychology of Identities, she dissects the concept of Identity and Space, “Some studies focus on literal space. Key questions consider “place identities,” that is, identities based on a sense of being at home. Key questions concern the effects of mobility on place affiliation and intersections between place identities and transitions in the life course."
LORNA SIMPSON, COIFFURE, 1991
MONTCLAIR ART MUSEUM EXHIBITION
CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY
The construction of identity is the forming or development of the many parts that can make up the whole. Identity can be very personal or applied to a group. The actual process of “construction” would insist that it happens over time. This can happen through different events and realizations of oneself. How one handles different situations, interests, family, cultural background, environment, values, social class and relationships can all contribute to or influence the formation of identity. Identity can change over the years and can be influenced by other people’s views of you.
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CARRIE MAE WEEMS, Untitled from the Sea Island Series (Ebo Landing), 1992 |
Carrie Mae Weems has built a legacy of representations of the African American experience. In Weems', Untitled from the Sea Island Series (Ebo Landing), 1992, she photographs Ebo Landing, a legendary place in the Gullah Region along the Georgia and South Carolina coast, where a group of Africans bravely walked into the sea and drowned themselves as a resistance to becoming slaves. The unique Cultural Identity of the Gullahs has been centered in this piece. The Gullahs are very different and have their own legacy almost and outside the Black American experience. They are one of the few Black regions that have held on to a large part of their African identity. Weems is showing the historic passing down of the legacy and tradition through the remembrance of this place. The scene in the photos looks calm and still almost like time has stopped there.
CARRIE MAE WEEMS, FRAMED BY MODERNISM,
1996
"A picture is worth a thousand words." Carrie Mae Weems’ 1996 Framed by Modernism, consists of three photographs of a scene with with a white man and a Black woman both posing differently in each photo. The woman, who is nude is in the background and the man, who is fully clothed, is in the foreground, both seeming connected and yet disconnected. The physical expression of while she seems to be relaxed yet holding back. The spacial differences don't just show in the physical distances but how society places women, often behind the man. She is in a more confined space, cramped in the corner, but making the best of her space, much like women's spaces, more particularly Black women and women of color's spaces. Where as the white man although seemingly uncomfortable and worried has all of the space out front. In Judith Howard's, Social Psychology of Identities, she dissects the concept of Identity and Space, “Some studies focus on literal space. Key questions consider “place identities,” that is, identities based on a sense of being at home. Key questions concern the effects of mobility on place affiliation and intersections between place identities and transitions in the life course."
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LORNA SIMPSON, COIFFURE, 1991 (images taken at museum distorted by reflections, found this image online) |
LORNA SIMPSON, COIFFURE, 1991
Lorna Simpson’s Coiffure, is displayed as three gelatin silver prints with 10 engraved plastic plaques below the . This artwork is documentation of some of the more delicate yet powerful parts of the culture. Hair is a huge cultural marker of people of African descent, particularly braided hairstyles. Black people’s hair throughout history has been commodified, politicized, penalized and accessorized. The winding braid in the middle reminds me of patterns in nature such as a sea shell or the lines in a tree trunk when cut it shows the history of the tree’s life time.
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| CLEMENTINE HUNTER, MELROSE SUNDAY MORNING, 1965 |
Clementine Hunter’s, Melrose Sunday Morning, 1965 shows the concept of religious identity. This painting shows the cultural and religious history of many Black Americans mainly starting in the South. Hunter knew this experience for herself, since she spent most of her life on a plantation in Louisiana. The painting shows what I have also witnessed throughout my life when going to church. Members traditionally in their “Sunday Best” going to church. Religion is a huge cultural identifier for the Black Community, from the pretty hats to the colorful dresses. This artwork immediately made me feel nostalgia and as if I were looking at a freeze frame of timeless history. However even though it is listed as religious identity, according to Judith Howard’s writings it would also be considered intersectional identity because of race, gender and religion cross paths here.
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| DENNIS OPPENHEIM, IDENTITY STRETCH, 1970-75 |
Dennis Oppenheim’s Identity Stretch, is a one-panel photo documentation with photo reproduction and collage elements. He is well known for his Earthworks and Conceptual Art. It examines Identity and sense of place through a collage of different images that have similar. The fingerprints belong to both Dennis and his son and can be seen a marker of the personal or biological stamp of identity. In society we even use “someone putting their fingerprints on something literally and figuratively, as an “expression”. Applying this to Howard's statements, this choice of grouping these images of the fingerprints, aerial shot of terrain and seemingly perhaps in an abstracted physical manifestation of her sentiments. Oppenheim’s collage is perhaps showing our place in the world, it is intriguing that all the images share multiple line patterns. In Judith Howard’s, Social Psychology of Identities, she mentions, “Space, both geographic and virtual, is another recent basis of identities, a direction that attests to the interdisciplinary character of recent research on identities.” Some studies focus on literal space; consider “place identities,” that is, identities based on a sense of being at home. Key questions consider “place identities,” that is, identities based on a sense of being at home. Key questions concern the effects of mobility on place affiliation and intersections between place identities and transitions in the life course."
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