A Chrysalis No. 2
2021 - Sculpture (Sculpture)
91.44 x 45.72 cm
Yétúndé Olagbaju
Yétúndé Olagbaju’s On becoming a star series recuperates the figure of ‘Mammy’, a stereotype rooted in American slavery that typically depicts a larger, dark skinned woman as a maternal presence, often within a domestic setting, and typically taking care of white children. After being referred to as a Mammy during their undergraduate degree, Olagbaju began exploring the figure in 2016 as a means of healing. Olagbaju’s first presentation on this topic was a book called Black Collectibles: Mammy and Friends (1997) that sells tchotchkes—like salt and pepper shakers or figurines—of the racist mammy image taking different forms, from which Olagbaju exorcised the Mammy images by carefully cutting them out of the book with a razor blade. With this act, and the many incarnations the gesture takes throughout the series, Olagbaju liberates Mammy from an exhausting existence as a culturally and racially charged entity, imagining the figure instead as a brilliant nebula reflecting across the cosmos. By revising Mammy’s origin story, the artist gives her, and themselves, a new agency that allows them to be obscured, unreadable, and vigorously independent. In A Chrysalis No. 2 , Olagbaju’s first public presentation of sculptural work, Mammy is transformed into a bust cast in bronze, providing a three-dimensional view of the many forms she might take collapsed into one. By casting Mammy in immutable bronze, but crafting a thumbprint in place of facial features, Olagbaju both firmly anchors her in the known physical world and permanently obstructs any traditional way of understanding or relating to her on a domestic human level.
Yétúndé Olagbaju is an artist, organizer, strategist, and educator. Their practice employs video, sculpture, photography, gesture, and performance as methods to critically address Black labor, legacy, and processes of healing. Their practice draws upon a desire to understand history, the people that made it, the myths and realities surrounding them, and how Olagbaju’s own identity is implicated in history’s timeline. Major themes that the artist engages with in their work include myths and how they are produced, notions of motherhood, expectations concerning this role, and how racism and settler colonialism affect the ways that maternal and domestic labor are valued. In that vein, the artist is also concerned with perceptions of labor, what it is and means, who conducts certain kinds of labor, and what kinds of labor go unnoticed or erased. They are also invested in exploring the kinds of stories that get erased, and whether erasure can be conceived of as a tool for liberation and transformation. Considering transformation, Olagbaju’s work meditates on how change occurs and how to hold space for change and honor transformation. Questions that the artist poses hinge on memorialization and how to memorialize transformation and unseen labor. Pressingly, Olagbaju asks: How does one memorialize the vastness of Blackness and Black legacy?
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » SLASH PARIS
Biennale de Lyon — 2024 — Usines Fagor — Exhibition — Slash Paris Login Newsletter Twitter Facebook Biennale de Lyon — 2024 — Usines Fagor — Exhibition — Slash Paris English Français Home Events Artists Venues Magazine Videos Back Biennale de Lyon — 2024 Exhibition Mixed media Upcoming © Biennale de Lyon 2024 Biennale de Lyon 2024 In over 1 year: September 1, 2024 → January 1, 2025 (Dates provisoires) Créée en 1991, la Biennale de Lyon est l’une des plus importantes biennales d’art contemporain au plan international et la première manifestation artistique d’envergure au plan national...
© » ARTSJOURNAL
‘All my films deal with how to live’: Wim Wenders on Herzog, spirituality and shooting a movie in 16 days | Wim Wenders | The Guardian Skip to main content Skip to navigation Skip to navigation ‘Fast is a gift, fast is unleashed creativity’: Wim Wenders photographed in his Berlin office by Malte Jaeger for the Observer New Review...
© » KADIST
Kota Ezawa
2017The Crime of Art is an animation by Kota Ezawa that appropriates scenes from various popular Hollywood films featuring the theft of artworks: a Monet painting in The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), a Rembrandt in Entrapment (1999), a Cellini in How to Steal a Million (1966), and an emerald encrusted dagger in Topkapi (1964)...
© » KADIST
Hong-Kai Wang
2011The video Music While We Work (2011) is the first part/work of a long-term research project started in 2010...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Burning Questions: Traditional Arts: The Forgotten COVID Casualty? | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints July 28, 2020 While the pandemic has resulted in losses of jobs in the arts, less has been said about the fate of craftsmen, artisans and masters of intangible heritage and traditional arts...
© » AMERICANSFORTHEARTS
National Cohort for the Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) Internship Program Selected for 2022 – 30 years of DIAL | Americans for the Arts Jump to navigation Americans for the Arts Arts Action Fund National Arts Marketing Project pARTnership Movement Animating Democracy Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Instagram YouTube Load Picture Home News Room National Cohort for the Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) Internship Program Selected for 2022 – 30 years of DIAL Hello Guest | Login National Cohort for the Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) Internship Program Selected for 2022 – 30 years of DIAL Monday, July 18, 2022 Americans for the Arts and its partners— New Jersey State Council on the Arts , Metro Arts: Nashville Office of Arts and Culture , Community Foundation of Sarasota County , Arts Connect International , and United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County —are thrilled to announce the interns selected for the 30th year of the Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) program...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Burning Questions: Is There Still Hope for Integrity and Intimacy in Online Performance? | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints August 4, 2020 Artists today have to grapple with being true to their creative integrities while dealing with the limitations of tech platforms and live delivery methods...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Weekly Picks: Malaysia (7–13 Jan 2019) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Weekly To Do January 7, 2019 Merdekarya 6th Anniversary , at Merdekarya, 12 Jan, doors open 6pm This institution for indie music is celebrating its six anniversary with a whole host of performances, no cover charge, and free tuak mixes (until 8pm)...
© » KADIST
Andrés Pereira Paz
2018Juan III (Pescadores En Una Isla) is a series of embroideries made with fake pre-Columbian fabrics produced by the Gonzales family, a three-generation family of pre-Columbian textile “forgers” based in Lima, Peru...