Perceptions

Mixed Media Collages on Canvas Board, 14” x 11”

2011

This series of collages deals with issues of difference and otherness. During a stay in Europe I lived in a small town where there were very few people of color and as a black woman, I was a notable presence in that environment. This work reflects my gradual response to looking out at the other and being seen as other in that place. I built the collages on top of pages from a German language book from the 1930’s called Hofluft!  It is a novel that deals with aristocracy in Europe during the period of WWI. I am not a speaker of German, and the inscrutability of the text for me as an outsider to the German language and Austrian culture is something I explore in this work. The difference in language becomes a barrier just as much as difference in race potentially could be. Questioning what it means to be in subject and/or object positions I look at how we see one another across variances in race, gender, class, and nationality.