ASSIGNMENT
This class challenges students to contend with the broad topic of contemporary domestic inequality through both artistic and psychological lenses. For the final project, students each selected one artwork from the Tang collection and wrote a label describing the work and its connections to psychological themes around inequality. In each label, students explore the history and context of their artwork and artist and discuss relevant psychological research on at least one type of inequality relevant to the work. Students were encouraged to take an intersectional approach to thinking about inequality, considering the ways in which multiple forms of marginalization can simultaneously contribute to oppression. In doing so, students’ work explores the complexities of contemporary domestic inequality and highlights the ways in which both scientific and artistic ways of knowing can help shed light on complex social problems.
Wangechi Mutu is a 50-year-old Kenyan artist. Though she was always passionate about art, she began her career in New York approximately 20 years ago and creates across a variety of mediums. Mutu’s art focuses on the idea of womanhood while playing off traditional gender roles.
In her collection of artworks, Histology of the Different Classes of Uterine Tumors, Wangechi Mutu focuses on womanhood, sexuality, race, and health status. With collages containing altered proportions of faces, ranging in age, race, and uterine anatomy, she questions the idea of beautiful women while simultaneously structuring their faces to promote discomfort. Mutu crosses the bound of intersectionality, showing us that a woman can identify in an infinite amount of ways. This can show all women, despite how they identify, have a place.
Healthcare in America has a clear gap in terms of equality of care based on discrimination and bias. Particularly with Black women, often women are not taken seriously with their medical complaints. Black patients are less likely to be treated for pain due to the false notion that they have a higher pain tolerance as opposed to white patients. Ageism is also a large problem in healthcare. Despite the guarantee most of us grow to become elderly, geriatric patients may not be treated with the same amount of care as younger patients because of the presumed amount of time they have left, decreasing the quality of life in older ages.
What do beautiful women look like? How long does beauty last?
Chillin’ with Liberty was created by Jamaican American photographer Renee Cox in 1998. It is an installation in her self-portrait series which depicts her posing heroically as her superhero character Raje. Cox’s work is inspired by her want to empower Black women and her art focuses on the portrayal of powerful and iconic Black women.
The Statue of Liberty is a symbol for the United States’ values of being a land of equal opportunity for all. Yet women and people of color both remain marginalized identities within the United States. This is characterized by their lack of representation in elected governmental offices, history textbooks, entertainment, other high-level positions of power and works of fiction. This is demonstrated by the lack of superheroes who are women of color. While representation in this specific area has recently increased, there are still few prominent women of color superheroes for children to look up to, admire, and feel represented by. This lack of representation is a symptom of the remaining existence of intrinsic and systematic racism and sexism in the United States.
Dirty Windows #5 is a photograph from Merry Alpern’s 1984 series Dirty Windows. Alpern photographed candid revealing shots at a private lap dance club from her friend’s apartment window. Alpern focuses on the identity of these women as sex workers, her photographs solely examining the women’s body, as we see here. This series can be seen as an investigation into the interactions between men and women in a male-dominated world by photographing the lives of these women only as we can see them behind a bathroom window. We don’t know who these women are, nor do we know why they are in this profession.
Sex work has a long history and various manifestations, but the related vulnerability and risk, especially for poorer women and minorities, is well-documented. There is mounting evidence that decriminalization decreases harm, and it is the policy option preferred by sex worker organizations. Despite this, some organizations such as Demand Abolition advocate for “ending demand” and banning sex work entirely.
Think about what it must have been like to be working in these conditions or how they were treated by the men they worked with. Does this lead you to question anything more behind the collection? What about the relations between women’s submission and empowerment?
The Dirty Windows series explores the profession of sex labor, leading the viewer to muse on its demand and power relations, and the monetization of female bodies. Merry Alpern takes us inside the purposefully concealed world of sex workers’ arrangements and behaviors.
From the series Working…, this photograph consists of a man working at a shelter performing the simple task of painting stamps. Though we don’t know who wrote them or when, the words “handicapped” and “retarded” are written on the back of the photograph, suggesting that the man has a mental disability. Owens captures what it means to work with a disability and the positive impacts it has on those who are disabled which is evident in the man’s contentment with life from his quote.
This photograph combats discrimination against people with disabilities in the workplace and discrimination against poverty. In the 1970s, having a job was something that was not common for people with disabilities, as only 1.5% of people with disabilities were employed. Although performing a simple task is largely associated with the stereotype of low-paying jobs, the man wears a collared shirt which contrasts the idea that people with disabilities cannot sustain themselves.
In Antonia, Goldin photographs a beautiful moment that suggests the playfulness and joy of a girl who is free with her body as she has her legs wide open touching her toes. The photo shows a girl who has not been shaped by societal standards surrounding the way women should act or look in relation to their bodies. Adolescent girls and women are often being defined by their ability to appear appealing to the male gaze and as a result they develop negative beliefs around their body.
Psychological research supports that young girls are more susceptible to developing negative beliefs about their bodies and experiencing body dissatisfaction than young boys. Pre-pubescent girls’ views of their body change as they grow up, changing from being about the health of their body and what it can do for them to how they fit the beauty standard. Losing the comfort in their body at a young age is shown by the development of disordered eating habits and body image issues in an attempt to fit into female scripted roles.
In 2007, more than half a century after Tallchief’s debut, there was, yet again, only one female POC ballerina in the country’s most prominent dance companies. This proves systemic racism against women of color’s bodies, looks, and racial status has persisted as a barrier against their pursuit of dance.
So, what was different about Tallchief? Tallchief’s entrance into the dance world coincided with a nationwide effort dubbed the “Indian Problem,” the main goal of which was to assimilate Natives in the greater White populous. Natives were being forced to move off reservations into the city to intermingle with and disappear into the White majority. This movement inevitably aimed to wipe out Native policies, councils, reservations, and their culture. A process that would effectively eliminate Native Americans themselves. Thus, unwittingly, Tallchief became the “Indian Problem’s” representative, an exemplar of a Native woman able to be worked into the high-White society as their “white swan.”
Alison Saar is a biracial woman that lives in Los Angeles, California. She creates many sculptures, prints, and installations on the Black female identity and African culture. Her mother, Betye Saar, and her father, Richard Saar, motivated her to be a creator like them.
Breach by Alison Saar has been created as a giant sculpture but has also been printed in different ways. Her tall print shows how impactful her message is about Black struggles in America. The print is also made out of a linen seed sack which is how women would carry their belongings during slavery. Saar created this work to express women’s despair because of the Great Mississippi River flood of 1927. However, her artwork possibly speaks of gender roles and stereotypes. The stereotype is that women often do all of the cooking and cleaning while men are working. The stereotype shows that women have a role in society that is sexist. Breach reveals the battle that women have to face in their everyday lives regardless if there was a flood flushing away their homes.
Carrie Moyer and Sue Schaffner founded Dyke Action Machine (DAM) in the 1990s. DAM recreated commercial images using lesbians, to show society that lesbians are as normal as everyone else. DAM’s last project was in 2008.
In 1997, the LGBTQ+ community was still fighting for marriage equality. As a result, DAM created this piece of art titled: Gay Marriage: You Might As Well Be Straight. DAM’s artwork shows two women in wedding dresses, surrounded by utensils.
“Parisian Wigs Protest” is a 1960s series of photographs depicting Black women wearing their natural Afro-textured hair as part of the Black is Beautiful movement. As part of the Grandassa Models, they promoted Black fashion and beauty during the Civil Rights Movement. By organizing the Parisian Wigs Protest in 1968, the Grandassa Models aimed to challenge the fashion industry’s Eurocentric beauty standards. In a symbolic display of resistance and pride, the models wore their natural hair in defiance of prevailing beauty standards.
Psychological research has shown that Eurocentric beauty standards can negatively affect people’s self-esteem and body image, especially women of color. A Eurocentric understanding of beauty emphasizes Western characteristics like straight hair while devaluing and marginalizing those characteristics that are more common in people of color. Black women especially undergo this struggle as they are often forced to straighten their hair or wear wigs to be considered “professional” in work settings as well as other settings.