GALLERY RESPONSE

“Black on black on black on black on black on black on black” is exactly as the title describes. Layers upon layers of black oil and wax folding onto themselves, making little rivers and valleys throughout the canvas. The texture is rough and jagged, there are no smooth surfaces on the piece other than its wooden frame. The darkness of it is a vacuum in the room, sucking in all the light that is thrown at it, even the spots that are more illuminated still feel like shadows, and it seems so angry. Maybe anger isn’t the right word, it’s more frustrated than anything. From across the room the painting is solid black, and you wonder if there was a mistake in hanging it in the gallery. Then you get closer and see all the tiny details you couldn’t see before. This is a very powerful piece, each little ridge and bump is like a scar, hidden from the common spectator but easy to see if you look close enough. Williams uses these “scars” as a metaphor for the common experience of black women (particularly in america). Forced to endure centuries of hate and indifference, these women have hidden emotional scars just as this piece does. The following two quotes I believe speak to this kind of inequality faced by women of color:
"Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed is female. Thus she turns herself into an object of vision: a sight"-john berger

Women are depicted in quite a different way than men- not because th feminine is different from the masculine- but because the “ideal” spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him-john berger

“2nd degree burn” is probably the most literal of the pieces in the gallery. I’m immediately drawn to the textures and materials she used, especially the use of bubble wrap and dead leaves. There is real bubble wrap in the painting itself as well as the bubble wrap texture throughout the canvas. Something tells me that there’s a memory there, perhaps someone commented to her that her skin looked or felt like bubble wrap or red stones (a man, in my imagination). While this is a literal depiction of a real burn, this is also representative of the “burn” that williams is expressing throughout the exhibition, the burn of society on black women. The scars (real and emotional) that the status quo has thrust upon them with no say, leaving permanent reminders of the horrors of american society and capitalism as a whole. the following quote speaks to this:
Talking with black female spectators… i noted the connection made between the realm of representation in mass media and the capacity of black women to construct ourselves as subjects in daily life. The extent to which black women feel devalued, objectified, dehumanized in this society determines the scope and texture of their looking relations-bell hooks