The three fit neatly into three generations
of black female artists concerned with both identity and the social issues affected by systemic racism.
This year has been unusually promising for the visibility of work
by black female artists, even while that prominence has further highlighted racially problematic attitudes within the art world.
In terms of diversity, this year was also notable for the nomination of Lynette Yiadom - Boakye, the
first black female artist to get such a nod.
In addition to her independent practice, Siwani is one of the founding members of the performance collective iQhiya, which was formed as a grassroots response to the lack of exhibition opportunity and underrepresentation of
black female artists in the south African art world.
In 1971, she set up Where We At, Black Women Artists, Inc (WWA), a collective of
black female artists who felt neglected not only by the mainstream but also by the male dominated Black Arts Movement and the largely white Feminist one.»
It garnered more than 8,500 Facebook Likes and nearly three times as many views as the second most popular post of 2015, a listing of 20 solo exhibitions
featuring black female artists.
Alma Thomas was the
sole black female artist in what became known as the Washington Color School, and the current exhibition reveals some of the complexity of her art.
They talk about there being room for only one Aretha, only one Tina Turner, but they're speaking in terms of genre when they could mention that the music industry of the time would not have supported
multiple black female artists; sometimes there are fewer mysteries than the film really proposes.
Highlights from Michelle Grabner's crowd - pleasing selection include Dawoud Bey's presidential portrait photography (Barack Obama, 2008), Karl Haendel's Theme Time Drawings, pencil drawings of various subjects arranged in shaped frames across a massive section of wall, and works by Donelle Woolford, the fictional
young black female artist «created» by Joe Scanlan and played by various actors whose Joke Painting (detumescence)(2013) investigates the notion of authenticity.
Thompson was featured prominently in «Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today,» a group exhibition of 21
black female artists recently presented at NMWA.
There is simply no reason apart from institutional racism that the multiplicity of black female perspectives that inform Scanlan's project could not be gained through an actual multiplicity of
black female artists participating in the Biennial.
His project for the Whitney Biennial involves creating the fictional persona of an Ivy League -
educated black female artist, «Donelle Woolford,» and presenting performances and art objects conceptualized by Scanlan as the creative products of this fictional artist who is played by a variety of actors.
There are also a few must - see gems opening this month, featuring work by
black female artists Beverly Buchanan (1940 - 2015), Johannesburg - based Turiya Magadlela, and London photographer Vron Ware.
In addition, «Shifting: African American Women Artists and the Power of Their Gaze» presents work by 39
black female artists at the David Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park.
The Landing is pleased to present Signifying Form, a group exhibition curated by jill moniz featuring highly narrative sculptural works by
black female artists made in Los Angeles between 1935 and 2016.
There are striking and intimate photos taken by Lorna Simpson of
other black female artists like Carrie Mae Weems and actress Alva Rogers.
Described by The Daily Telegraph as «the under - appreciated hero of black British art», Himid made her name in the 1980s as one of the leaders of the British black arts movement - both painting and curating exhibitions of similarly
overlooked black female artists.
Several black female artists are opening solo exhibitions today including Sonya Clark at the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Va.; Samella Lewis at Stella Jones Gallery in New Orleans; Jaimie Milner at Residency Art in Inglewood, Calif.; and Zanele Muholi at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati and the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh.
To mark its 20th anniversary the museum is presenting a group exhibition featuring works by 20
black female artists from Africa, the Caribbean and the United States, including Amy Sherald, Aya V. Jackson, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Ebony G. Patterson, and Brenna Youngblood.
Senga Nengudi, notably the biennale exhibition's
only black female artist, has installed her iconic RSVP sculptures (begun in 1975)-- sand - filled nylon stockings stretched in site - specific performances — atop powerful fans, allowing their sagging, bodily forms to float tenuously off the ground.
Moreover, two of the most critically
recognized black female artists in the United States were born in Africa and are breaking auction records — Julie Mehretu and Njideka Akunyili Crosby.
This visibility isn't sudden, nor should it be surprising, but it is certainly an important place to be for an artist who has dedicated much of her professional life to making Black artists, and
specifically Black female artists, more visible in Britain.
Himid went on to organise a number of group exhibitions throughout the 1980s, including Five Black Women at the Africa Centre, London (1983), The Thin Black Line at ICA, London (1985), and Unrecorded Truths at the Elbow Room (1986), which brought to public attention her own generation
of black female artists, questioning the limits of their creative visibility in the process.
«Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video» opens at the Guggenheim Museum in New York on Jan. 24, the first solo exhibition featuring
a black female artist since the museum's founding in 1939.
Her work is currently featured in «Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today,» a group exhibition of 21
black female artists, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C..
didn't understand that blacks were being put in a completely separate world in the art world, that black male artists and
black female artists are completely separated, completely segregated to this day.»
This tension was brought to light recently by the Yams collective, which withdrew from the Biennial in protest of the inclusion of work by Joe Scanlan, a Princeton professor who submitted work fictitiously created by
a black female artist named Donelle Woolford — a hornet's nest of racial and gender - based provocation.
«The Thin Black Line» was one of a series of exhibitions curated by Himid during the 1980s that brought a new generation of
Black female artists to the fore, and both challenged and transformed then - dominant practices of exhibition - making.
Earlier this month, artnet News ranked Mehretu among the most expensive living women artists, making her work the most expensive of
any black female artist.
Speaking of dicks,
black female artist Donelle Woolford is actually «the creation» of white male artist Joe Scanlan.)
April 2017 / The Guardian Kara Walker, Karon Davis and
the black female artists retelling US history Download PDF