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Digging Deeper
September 19, 2009-April 4, 2010
Photo-sensitivity Warning: This exhibition contains a flashing strobe light. People with a history of photo-sensitive seizures should not plan to visit this exhibition.
A new collaborative exhibition featuring the works of Willie Cole and Hank Willis Thomas, entitled Digging Deeper, will open this fall at The Amistad Center for Art & Culture. Both Cole and Thomas were invited to explore The Amistad Center’s extensive collection of art, artifacts, and archives which document the African American experience and respond with new works inspired by this rich source material. The show will also include additional objects from The Amistad Center’s collection to highlight the common threads between historical characterizations of race and present-day conceptions of African American culture.
Cole and Thomas are both known for their transformation and reinterpretation of identifiable objects into works of art, many of which reference race and socio-cultural issues. Cole is best known for his use of irons and ironing boards to create images of slave ships and African masks. His work often references his family’s history as domestic workers and their roots in Africa. For Digging Deeper, he created several new pieces including a video piece entitled Remembering Mammy, which references the place of the mammy figure in historic and contemporary culture.
Thomas recently gained notoriety for his photographic works, which provide commentary on branding and consumer culture and often re-appropriate advertisements and other instantly recognizable symbols to suggest the exploitation and commoditization of African American culture. Thomas’ work for Digging Deeper includes a large scale mixed media installation entitled Greetings from the Sunny South, which is a house-like structure that incorporates more than 500 post cards from The Amistad Center's collection. The post cards depict stereotypical imagery as well as personal photographs that were adapted to post card form.
The artists also created two cabinets of curiosity inspired by pieces from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art – where The Amistad Center is housed. One cabinet, titled “Curious objects from the demise of a peculiar institution,” holds objects from The Amistad Center’s collection including advertisements, product packages, and other objects of ephemera that seem immediately offensive to today’s viewers, but were once readily accepted by society. The other cabinet, called “Curious objects from the now yet to be understood,” includes objects contributed by both Cole and Thomas that are unproblematic today, but may be questioned by future generations.
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