narrative using both text (written in black dialect) and embroidered
portraits interspersed with traditional patterned squares. This work,
while resonating with autobiographical references, also speaks to the
larger issues of the history of African American culture and the strug-
gles of women to overcome oppression.
LORNA SIMPSONThe issues of racism and sexism are also
central to the work ofLorna Simpson(b. 1960). Simpson has spent
much of her career producing photographs that explore feminist and
African American strategies to reveal and subvert conventional repre-
sentations of gender and race. Like Sherman (FIG. 36-35), she deals
with the issue of “the gaze,” trying to counteract the process of objecti-
fication to which both women and African Americans are subject. In
Stereo Styles (FIG. 36-42), a series of Polaroid photographs and en-
gravings, Simpson focuses on African American hairstyles, often used
to symbolize the entire race. Hair is a physical code tied to issues of so-
cial status and position. Kobena Mercer, who has studied the cultural
importance of hair, observed that “Hair is never a straightforward bi-
ological ‘fact’ because it is almost always groomed,...cut,...and gen-
erally ‘worked upon’ by human hands. Such practices socialize hair,
making it the medium of significant ‘statements’ about self and soci-
ety.”^27 On the issue of race, Mercer argued, “where race structures so-
cial relations of power, hair—as visible as skin color, but also the most
tangible sign of racial difference—takes on another forcefully sym-
bolic dimension.”^28 In Stereo Styles,Simpson also commented on the
appropriation of African-derived hairstyles as a fashion commodity,
and the personality traits listed correlate with specific hairstyles.
MELVIN EDWARDS American Melvin Edwards(b. 1937)
also has sought to reveal a history of collective oppression through
his art. One of Edwards’s major sculptural series focused on the
metaphor of lynching to provoke thought about the legacy of
racism. This Lynch Fragment series encompassed more than 150
welded-steel sculptures produced in the years after 1963. Lynching
36-42Lorna Simpson,Stereo Styles,1988. 10 black-and-white Polaroid prints and 10 engraved plastic plaques, 5 4 9 8 overall. Private
collection.
In Stereo Styles,Simpson presents photographs of African American hairstyles as racial symbols associated with personality traits. She also
comments on those coiffures as fashion commodities.
36-43Melvin
Edwards,Tambo,- Welded steel,
2 41 – 8 2 11 – 4 .
Smithsonian
American Art
Museum, Wash-
ington, D.C.
Edwards’s welded
sculptures of
chains, spikes,
knife blades, and
other found ob-
jects allude to the
lynching of African
Americans and the
continuing strug-
gle for civil rights
and an end to
racism.
as an artistic theme prompts an immediate and visceral response,
conjuring chilling and gruesome images from the past. Edwards
sought to extend this emotional resonance further in his art. He con-
structed the series’ relatively small welded sculptures, such as Tambo
(FIG. 36-43), from found metal objects—for example, chains,
hooks, hammers, spikes, knife blades, and handcuffs. Although
Edwards often intertwined or welded together the individual metalPainting and Sculpture since 1970 9951 ft.1 ft.