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Can you name five women artists? Since 2016, the National Museum of Women in the Arts has been asking this question on social media each March during Women’s History Month using the hashtag…#5WomenArtists: April Bey
April Bey. She’s the Face of…, 2013. Pigmented resin on wood plank, 22 x 32 in.. Collection of the California African American Museum., Courtesy of the artist
Can you name five women artists?
Since 2016, the National Museum of Women in the Arts has been asking this question on social media each March during Women’s History Month using the hashtag #5WomenArtists. The campaign calls attention to the fact that women have not been treated equally in the art world, and today they remain dramatically underrepresented and undervalued in museums, galleries, and auction houses.
Black women are doubly underrepresented in this context, often absent from in America’s museums and erased from the art world’s consciousness. With an eye towards changing that, CAAM will be sharing images and biographies of five women artists from CAAM’s permanent collection.
April Bey
She’s the Face of…, 2013
Pigmented resin on wood plank
22 x 32 in.
Collection of the California African American Museum. Gift of the artist
Sheeeeit!, 2013
Single-channel video
42 sec.
Collection of the California African American Museum. Gift of the artist
Through her interdisciplinary work, April Bey explores a variety of issues in American and Bahamian popular culture, as well as immigration, contemporary popular culture, feminism, and race. She’s the Face of… presents the silhouette of a woman with natural hair, which the artist created by pouring resin in several colors onto a painted, cloud-filled sky. At the center of the image is a fragment of an advertisement for “hair milk,” a popular leave-in moisturizer. The painting endorses a new ideal of beauty that celebrates healthy, natural hair, freed from damaging chemical procedures, such as relaxers. Sheeeeit! exposes the effects of hair relaxer on natural hair. The artist filmed her own hair under a microscope, and the fragments of hair surrounded by chemical bubbles of relaxer resemble an abstract composition. The introduction features the voice of Clay Davis, a character from The Wire, an HBO television show.
Other 2019 #5WomenArtists selections:
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