Karen Osorio
Professor Doris Cacoilo
Art & Activism
16 February 2023
When visiting Danielle Scott’s exhibit Kinfolk, there were two art pieces that caught my attention. These two pieces were the Ruth Afontaine Family (2022) and Charlotte Noble (2022). When I first saw these two particular pieces I correlated them back to what Scott mentioned in her statement about visiting her homeland and just feeling her lineage, as a whole speaking to her. I feel like that’s something that is very important to mention, especially when looking at the context of her entire exhibition. The act of revisiting your lineage, ancestry, and being aware of your roots’ history is something that can allow us to be telepathically tethered to the past and proceed to tell our ancestors’ stories with a first person perspective. Oftentimes, reaching into ones ancestral past can lead us towards a bigger purpose or awareness of current social issues or events. It can make viewers ask themselves how is it possible that we’ve come so far but we’re still so far from bettering as a society.
The Ruth Afontaine Family (2022) is a form of collage exploration and illustration expression. Scott used resin and what she calls mixed medium assemblage. In this art piece there is a depiction of children going into what seems to be a place of worship, like a church. The children are wearing colorful attire with patterns on them. The background of it is pieces of paper that are from a literary source. When looking at this piece I felt an immense comfort as well as an immense sympathy. The feeling of comfort was because the children were together and not alone. However the sympathy part of it was more so because this church was most likely one of their havens and it’s a concept that breaks my heart because no child should feel unsafe anywhere.
Another piece that spoke to me furthermore had to be the Charlotte Noble (2022) piece. When I came across this artwork I immediately felt a force of energy looking back at me. This piece featured an older black woman dressed in a blue patterned garment along with a hat. Similarly to the Ruth Afontaine Family piece, this artwork was created with mixed medium assemblage and resin. This piece felt particularly vocal to me because of the way the woman is looking straight at her audience. The woman herself seemed to me like an outspoken and resilent soul.
As I walked through the exhibit, I kept a mental note of which quotes these two artworks, just like the others, reminded me of. At first glance I immediately thought of Susan Sontag’s article “On Photography”. She wrote that “although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are.” The reason this came to mind immediately was because the exhibit in entirety was the epitome of feeling and emotion. With just a glance of an art piece or two, it would inevitably pull you in- just like any fine art does. But truly, I feel that many people forget that paintings and drawings are just as capable of getting a reaction out of an individual as photographs. While art and photography have different processes, they are each still art. They are done in different ways, yet they are often implemented into the public to raise awareness or touch someone’s soul in some way.
Furthermore, as activism artists, telling our ancestors’ stories through a lens of creativity without diluting their history, is what we do. Taking this into consideration made me think back to the reading of “The Art of Activism” chapter one in which it read that “we make sense of our world through symbols and stories at least as much as we do through facts and figures.” I agreed with this wholeheartedly because initially when I read Danielle Scott’s artist statement, I immediately thought back to this quote. The reason being because Scott herself mentioned how visiting her homeland made her feel connected to her roots and her ancestors. I feel that when artists feel this way, they feel driven to dig through their ancestors’ stories and illustrate them on canvas. Artists creating art with the intention of acknowledging history is their way of sensing our world.
Lastly, in bell hooks’ “Understanding Patriarchy”, she spoke about her household and how her parents both were led on by patriarchal values. They would put these values upon her and her siblings – especially her father. She writes, “we were to remember that if we did not obey his rules, we would be punished, even onto death. This is the way we were experientially schooled into the art of patriarchy.” When applying this to the pieces I chose I realized that patriarchal standards could have been present in both works of art. It could be something as simple as their clothing, their demeanor, or the meaning alone of the piece.
Charlotte Noble (2022)
Ruth Afontaine Family (2022)
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