Activism in Exile
Elizabeth Catlett’s Mask for Whites
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15010296 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dalila Scruggs (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 2-21 |
| Publication date | 2018-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Art (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1073-9300 • E-ISSN: 1549-6503 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/701613 |
| OpenAlex | W2901641352 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
Throughout the late 1960s and into the 1970s, African American artist Elizabeth Catlett created iconic prints and sculptures that espoused political solidarity with black liberation movements in the United States. Yet, as a Mexican citizen barred from entry to the U.S., very real obstacles prevented Catlett from full participation in the activism underway. This article focuses on Catlett’s Mask for Whites (ca. 1970), a fiberglass and collage construction that diverges from the artist’s signature aesthetic. As such, Mask has seldom been published or discussed in literature about her. I argue that this work should not be dismissed as an outlier to the Catlett oeuvre. Drawing on archival documentation, I demonstrate that the collaged interior is a result of a sustained practice of reading and cutting news items from the Black Panther newspaper in early 1970. With its dense juxtaposition of newspaper clippings, the interior of the mask was designed to emblematize black consciousness. Moreover, the work’s Janus construction suggests the ways that Catlett negotiated sectarian conflicts of black nationalism, at once embodying cultural nationalism’s esteem for African art while also espousing revolutionary nationalism’s incisive political critique. Mask for Whites deepens our understanding of Catlett’s work from this period by rendering visible the strategies she employed to overcome her exile and to actively engage with the Black Arts and Black Power Movements from afar
Aesthetics · Art · Black Power · Media studies · Nationalism · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Sculpture · Sociology · Visual arts · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society
| Highly cited | No |
|---|