Staging Blackness as an Object
Staging Blackness as an Object
These works deal with the historical representation of slavery. Reflecting the historically dominant influence of Western thought around the racialized black body, they render blackness hypervisible or else invisible. Within this framework, the black person is often reduced to a tool or scientific specimen.
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A Negro hung alive by the Ribs to a Gallows, plate 2 from the book Narrative of a Five Year's Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam in Guina ... from the year 1772 to 1777 by Captain J.G. Stedman
A Negro hung alive by the Ribs to a Gallows, plate 2 from the book Narrative of a Five Year's Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam in Guina ... from the year 1772 to 1777 by Captain J.G. Stedman, printed December 1, 1792 -
A Surinam Planter in his Morning Dress, plate 10 from the book Narrative of a Five Year's Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam in Guina ... from the year 1772 to 1777 by Captain J.G. Stedman
A Surinam Planter in his Morning Dress, plate 10 from the book Narrative of a Five Year's Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam in Guina ... from the year 1772 to 1777 by Captain J.G. Stedman, printed December 2, 1793 -
Cotton pickers, Ferguson Unit, Texas
Cotton pickers, Ferguson Unit, Texas, 1967–69, printed 1979 -
Elkanah Watson
Elkanah Watson, 1782 -
Mixed race: Cora, age 18, born of a negro father and Indian mother (dorsal)
Mixed race: Cora, age 18, born of a negro father and Indian mother (dorsal), ca. 1881