Persevere and Resist: The Strong Black Women of Elizabeth Catlett
This richly illustrated catalogue accompanies Persevere and Resist: The Strong Black Women of Elizabeth Catlett, presented at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. It offers new scholarship on the work of Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012), one of the most important visual chroniclers of the African American experience in the twentieth century, reconsidering her practice through the lenses of contemporary psychology and sociology.
Taking Catlett’s landmark print series The Black Woman (1946–1947) as its point of departure, curator Heather Nickels examines the artist’s work in relation to the “Strong Black Woman” trope, Afrofemcentrism, and misogynoir. Her essay offers an alternative reading of Catlett’s figures, attending to posture, gesture, and expression while addressing the impact of intergenerational trauma rooted in chattel slavery.
The catalogue also includes a contribution by Dr. Melanie Herzog, who situates Catlett’s life and work within the context of urgent contemporary social concerns. Fully illustrated, the publication documents approximately 35 prints and sculptures featured in the exhibition, including selections from The Black Woman series—of which the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art is one of only three American institutions to hold a complete set.
On view at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art from June 5 to August 29, 2021, the exhibition was curated by Heather Nickels, Joyce Blackmon Curatorial Fellow of African American Art and Art of the African Diaspora.
Details:
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By Heather Nickels, with a contribution by Melanie Herzog
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Softback
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Dimensions: 250 × 200 mm
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96 pages
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45 illustrations
