Nearly fifty years after the release of the feminist anthem “I Am Woman,” women still find their numbers underrepresented in politics, business, and museum collections. While this exhibition draws its name from the 1970s song, it highlights a more contemporary feminism that is not based on any single narrative of womanhood, but explores the vital contributions of women to numerous issues including the environment, identity, politics, race, sexuality, social activism, faith, and more. Crossing both generational and media divides, I Am . . . features the best of modern and contemporary artistic practice and offers an inclusive vision of women making art, in relation to the compelling issues that defined these artists’ times.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby b. 1983, Enugu, Nigeria Works in Los Angeles, California Wedding Souvenirs 2016 Acrylic, colored pencil, collage, and commemorative fabric on paper Museum purchase, 2017-5-1 Inward vision, outward presence. Acclaimed artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby responds to the lustrous paintings of Francisco Goya, the history of portraiture, and such personal effects as souvenirs from her wedding and that of her brother in this intimate self-portrait. She describes her mixed-media paintings as creating “a very active space where cultures come together to create something new” by juxtaposing visual cues from Nigeria, Los Angeles, and elsewhere to recognize the hybrid experience of people who move, travel, and share experiences across borders
Batoul S’Himi b. 1974, Asilah, Morocco Works in Martil, Morocco Untitled, from the series World Under Pressure 2011 Aluminum Museum purchase, 2014-15-1 Putting women on the map. Batoul S’Himi has converted cookware into an ambassador that can roam the globe and assert a place for women in it. She describes how “travel [and] the internet forced me to look at the world and draw on my daily life.” At once quirky and eloquent, her sculpture takes the most domestic and local of spaces—the kitchen or hearth—and situates it within a global picture. S’Himi’s selection of a pressure cooker draws attention to the underwhelming representation of women and women’s issues on a global level, while also slyly alluding to the mounting pressure to change this.
Each diverse work of art comes from the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Beginning in 2012, the museum launched the Women’s Initiative Fund to increase the profile of Africa’s women in the arts through exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships globally. This exhibition is one result, as is the overall increase from 11 to 22 percent of the number of women artists in the museum’s permanent collection.
To recommend other valuable resources advocating for Africa’s women in the arts, to make a contribution to this initiative, or to share your own story using the social media hashtags @IAMnmafa and #IAMnmafa.
Billie Zangewa b. 1973, Blantyre, Malawi Works in Johannesburg, South Africa Constant Gardener 2014 Dupion silk, synthetic thread Museum purchase, 2017-11-1 A female gaze. Billie Zangewa stitches scenes from her life to portray a woman who, as she says, “does not look for approval outside of herself.” Constant Gardener refers to the time after the artist’s son was born and she would sometimes rise at night to plant the fresh produce that would later nourish her child. For Zangewa, sewing is a matter of identity and she prefers to work with the luminous, reflective properties of dupion silk.
Nompumelelo Ngoma b. 1984, Soweto, South Africa Works in Johannesburg, South Africa Take Care of Me 2009 Marley tile etching monoprint Museum purchase, 2014-23-6 She fashions statements. For Nompumelelo Ngoma, wedding gowns are emblematic of the tensions negotiated by South African women as they navigate between local custom and the forces of globalization. She is motivated by “issues of femininity, identity and gender,” and questions “the notion of domesticity and vulnerability in the context of African tradition.” As she states, she wants her viewers to “ponder upon these accepted norms and to also reflect on who we are as a nation and how history has formed who we’ve become.”
Senzeni Marasela b. 1977, Thokoza, South Africa Works in Johannesburg, South Africa Covering Sarah 2009–10 Red thread on linen Museum purchase, 2012-3-1 & -2 Redressing history. Senzeni Marasela has said that “most of what I do is insert myself. I think into history and become a part of it. Because when I was growing up, a lot of it was missing.” In Covering Sarah, Marasela turns to the history of Sarah Baartman—a Khoi woman who was nicknamed the “Hottentot Venus,” due to her pronounced buttocks, and displayed like a curiosity in Europe. Marasela depicts herself and her mother covering Sarah, thus exposing and redressing a traumatic history.
Toyin Odutola b. 1985, Ife, Nigeria Works in New York, New York Untitled (D. O. Back Study) 2011 Ballpoint pen ink on paper Museum purchase, 2012-1-1 Beyond the surface. Motivated to test and unsettle binaries like male and female, black and white, self and represented-self, artist Toyin Odutola creates portraits using the interlacing, sinuous strokes of a ballpoint pen. In this study of her brother, Dotun, the artist set out on a journey “into identity art . . . to explore how rendering skin cannot simply alter perceptions of race, but how certain employments of mark-making can alter a presence in its entirety—to get at the true isolation and displacement (à la feelings) of the subject being portrayed.”
Zanele Muholi b.1972, Umlazi, South Africa Works in Johannesburg, South Africa Pam Dlungwana, Vredhoek, Cape Town 2011 ed. 2/8 Silver gelatin print Gift of Diane and Charles Frankel, 2018-17-1 Being seen. Since 2006, visual activist Zanele Muholi has been photographing black lesbians, particularly in South Africa. As the artist has so powerfully stated, “I thought to myself that if you have remarkable women in America and around the globe, you equally have remarkable lesbian women in South Africa . . . I’m basically saying that we deserve recognition, respect, validation, and to have publications that mark and trace our existence.” Pam Dlungwana is one of the daring women Muholi has added to a global visual record as part of this project.
Patience Torlowei b. 1964, Nigeria Works in Lagos, Nigeria Esther 2013 Dress: natural fibers, silk, silk taffeta lining, cotton interfacings, adhesive Petticoat: net polyester, metal, lace trimmings Gift of the artist, 2014-28-1 Fashion first. Patience Torlowei contends “Esther is much more than a dress. She is a force.” Produced in response to the exhibition Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa (Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, 2013), Esther is emblazoned with scenes of oil and diamond extraction, and the hazards of war. These are countered with the lustrous gold fabric to highlight the riches and potential of the African continent. Esther is the first haute couture work to enter the museum’s collection.
Sokari Douglas Camp b. 1958, Buguma, Nigeria Works in London, England Sketch for Church Ede 1985 Mixed media on canvas Gift of Michael Graham-Stewart in memory of Sylvia H. Williams, 97-7-1 A tribute to her father. After her father passed away, sculptor Sokari Douglas Camp “didn’t want to make a tombstone.” Instead, she welded a ceremonial bed such as the one upon which her father was laid for viewing and painted an intimate portrait of herself and her two sisters. Wrapped in stiff lace, the women appear disconnected and mechanical, as they go through the motions of the funeral rites and negotiate the emotions and complexities of mourning.
Nike Davies-Okundaye b. 1951, Ogida, Nigeria Works in Lagos, Nigeria Liberal Women Protest March I & II 1995 Acrylic on canvas Gift of Ambassador Robin Renee Sanders in honor of the artist Chief Nike Davies-Okundaye 2012-14-1 & -2 Collective power. Upon a backdrop of adire—a textile art used historically by Yoruba women of southwestern Nigeria to communicate symbolically—Nike Davies-Okundaye has portrayed women in their finest attire, engaged in nonviolent forms of protest. She sought to show that “women are very, very powerful . . . Sometimes, they are more powerful than their husbands . . . Women . . . are stronger than they think they are.”
Wangechi Mutu b. 1972, Nairobi, Kenya Works in Nairobi, Kenya, and Brooklyn, New York Tree Woman Paper pulp, soil, wood, rock, steel 2016 Museum purchase, Women’s Initiative Fund, 2017-12-1 Natural power. Earth, pulp, stone, and branch come together in Wangechi Mutu’s Tree Woman to explore the fertile associations between land, the body, and the senses. As the artist says, “That Art is a means to reflect and question our co-existence within the unfathomable, magnificence of nature is discernible in Tree Woman’s rhizomatous-muscularity, bound and bodacious figure that is enigmatic and emergent.”
MwangiHutter Ingrid Mwangi, b. 1975, Nairobi, Kenya; Robert Hutter, b. 1964, Ludwigshafen, Germany Work between Berlin, Ludwigshafen, Germany, and Nairobi, Kenya On a Beach Desert Meadow 2012 Single-channel video with sound 3 min. 44 sec. Gift of Tony Podesta, 2018-7-1 Imaginary landscape. Ingrid Mwangi and Robert Hutter refer to themselves as a single artist with two bodies. For this video, they planted a tree on a beach that reminded them of the sand dunes of a desert. We see Mwangi walk to the sapling in the blowing wind before her body merges with the landscape in this work that “speaks of the delicate balance of nature and hints towards the extent of human impact.”
Frances Goodman b. 1975, Johannesburg, South Africa Works in Johannesburg, South Africa Skin on Skin 2012 Faux pearl earrings, found leather car seat, adhesive Museum purchase, 2016-17-1 Love or lust? A single pearl caught in the seam of a car hints at a romantic liaison or the innocence of that first kiss and young love. A cascade of pearls across the seat of a car takes on a sinister edge, laying bare the covert history and potential violence of sex for sale. Frances Goodman plays with this tension saying, “this is a site of a loss of innocence, the backseat of cars . . . I had old car seats deconstructed and taken apart. They hang on the wall, almost like skins—like these deflated icons . . . with their pomp and ceremony taken out of them.”
Adejoke Tugbiyele b. 1977, Brooklyn, New York Works in New York, New York Past/Future 2015 Straw and leather hat, palm stems, synthetic bathing nets, perforated metal, brass wire, copper wire, bubble wrap Gift of Patricia A. Bell, 2017-6-1 Past hardships, future freedoms. Fabricated from brooms, strainers, and other symbolic materials, Adejoke Tugbiyele’s sculpture simultaneously evokes a figure bent from labor, burdened by the hardships that come from being gay in Africa, and one turned in an erotic position. Tugbiyele “learnt that an enormous sex-work industry exists, and being criminalized can lead to extreme poverty, leaving queer Africans very little options on how to make a living.” Outwardly neither male nor female, this sculpture stands as a reminder that criminalizing same-sex love should be relegated to the past, making way for a future in which all are free to celebrate their diverse identities.
Susanne Wenger (Olorisha Adunni) 1915–2009, Graz, Austria Worked in Oshogbo, Nigeria Untitled 1960–69 Screen print on paper Gift of the Collection of William and Mattye Reed, 2011-11-2 Visual piety. Susanne Wenger moved to Nigeria as an adult. She fully embraced Yoruba faith and practice, becoming fluent in the language and achieving the status of olorisha (priestess). Wenger used the sale of prints to fund the creation of monumental shrines in the sacred groves of Oshogbo. She realized that the “spirit does not reveal itself in the representation of any shape but the transformation of shapes.” The jagged, animated composition of her male and female figures in this print are meant to be “dynamic, as are human and godly inter-relationships and mystical forces.”
Ladi Kwali 1925–1984, Kwali, Nigeria Worked in Abuja, Nigeria Bowl Mid- to late 20th century Glazed ceramic Gift of the Wil and Irene Petty Collection, 2008-5-21 Critically modern. Ladi Kwali acquired local notoriety for her ceramics early in her life, even making vessels for the emir of the Abuja Emirate, Alhaji Sulemanu Barau. When she fused her knowledge of Gwari hand-building and decorative practices with the wheel throwing and stoneware glazes taught at the Abuja Pottery Training Center (founded by British potter Michael Cardew in 1951), her vessels became internationally acclaimed and she became part of the discourse of what is considered modern in Nigerian art. This bowl, which bears her signature—or chop—on its base, demonstrates her preference for geometric symmetry in her pattern making.
Etiyé Dimma Poulsen b. 1968, Aroussi, Ethiopia Works in Paris, France Femme rouge à l’anneau 2001 Ceramic, mixed media Museum purchase in honor of Roslyn Adele Walker, 2003-3-3 Fired-up memories. Fired in a kiln of her own making, Etiyé Dimma Poulsen has formed from clay an upright figure whose crackled red and black surface conveys a sense of world weariness and wisdom. Poulsen, now based in the Parisian suburbs, creates characters that speak to memories of her childhood in Ethiopia and Tanzania. Working with Egyptian, Sufi, and Zulu references, the artist has stated that “Without knowing why, I found myself experimenting with these materials. That is how my first sculpture was born . . . I suppose one could use other materials, but clay and iron mesh happen to be mine.”
Magdalene Anyango N. Odundo b. 1950, Nairobi, Kenya Works in Surrey, England Reduced Mixed-Color Symmetrical Piece 1990 Ceramic, slip Museum purchase, 91-4-2 Embodying a global experience. Magdalene Odundo infuses each of her unique vessels with references to her international experiences and sources. She has found inspiration in the works of Ladi Kwali, Maria Martinez, Jean Arp, and the artists of the ancient Cyclades. As she has said, “I wanted us in Africa to look at what is our own, at the design possibilities that exist there, and to form it into a language that will be internationally recognized.” In this vessel, the artist has massaged its lines until one can almost imagine in its silhouette a plump woman with hands on hips, or a sassy friend with bold hoop earrings.
Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi b. 1943, Marapyane, South Africa Works in Marapyane and Johannesburg, South Africa There can be death but the spirit never dies 1991–97 Oil pastel on paper Museum purchase, 99-10-1 Life cut in pieces. Constructed from a combination of torn drawings pieced together to create new associations, Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi materializes what she calls “life cut in pieces.” Created during South Africa’s transition from a racist apartheid government to democracy, the award-winning artist has crowded into her composition a bound man—seemingly ready to drop from the picture plane itself—and three women, who may comfort and support him, deliberate a solution to his problems, or gaze toward a future in another time, another place. The resulting claustrophobic space suggests the tensions between rural and urban life, women and men, the past and present.
Penny Siopis b. 1953, Vryburg, South Africa Works in Cape Town, South Africa Studio Setting 1986 Oil on canvas Museum purchase, 2016-10-1 Human spoils and excesses. A disproportionately large male nude looms in front of glistening desserts, overripe fruits, overflowing and overturned plates and other incongruous items. With this thickly painted canvas created during the final years of apartheid in South Africa, Penny Siopis was “connecting that kind of excess of material surface and an overload of symbols—mostly Western symbols or symbols of Western painting—to a moment of being, if you like, in South Africa at that time, which was, of course, a space of massive dispossession by the majority of the people.”
Penny Siopis b. 1953, Vryburg, South Africa Works in Cape Town, South Africa Communion 2011 Digital video, color, sound 5 min. 30 sec. Gift of the artist, 2016-13-1 Unsettling. Penny Siopis tells the story of Sister Aidan (Dr. Elsie Quinlan) who was murdered by a crowd enraged by having been shot at and dispersed during their anti-apartheid protest in 1952. All the footage was found at flea markets. Using reels of anonymous home movies, Siopis reveals how images—even when adapted to a new context and narrative—have the power to make us feel, to confront our assumptions, and ultimately, to prompt empathy, awareness, and informed action. For Siopis, Communion is “about an individual caught up in a larger social, political context but it’s elemental enough . . . to see, or to envisage in it, a way to speak beyond the specific historical and political moment.”
Bertina Lopes 1924–2012, Maputo, Mozambique Worked in Mozambique, Portugal, and Italy Sto Sognando? La Città è questa? (Am I dreaming? Is this the city?) 1958 Oil on canvas Museum purchase and gift of Franco Confaloni and the Lopes Archives, 2014-27-1 Vision of African strength. Painted at the time African nations were declaring independence from colonial governments, Mozambican artist Bertina Lopes turns to urbanization as a metaphor for Mozambique’s—and Africa’s—readiness for freedom from external rule. Her whimsical composition of a woman silhouetted against both foliage and cityscape also projects a sense of romanticism and optimism. Due to her integral role in Mozambique’s fight for independence and subsequent peace agreement, Lopes was honored upon her death with an official ceremony in Maputo.
Sue Williamson b. 1941, Lichfield, England Works in Cape Town, South Africa The Last Supper Revisited 1993 Mixed-media installation Purchased with funds provided by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Battle Creek, Michigan, 2002-3-1 The truth is on the walls! Ten years after the last houses of the multiracial District Six neighborhood were demolished by South Africa’s apartheid government, Sue Williamson returned to the site and gathered debris. As she says, “I went looking for the traces of the old community.” Williamson encased the building materials, toys, and other fragments she found in resin and installed them as if they glowed atop a dining room table, along with a soundtrack of bulldozers and conversation, the smell of incense, and photographs of the last supper at her friend Naz Gool-Ebrahim’s home. Before it was razed guests wrote on the walls of Gool-Ebrahim’s home, one commenting, “The truth is on the walls!”
Helga Kohl b. 1943, Silesia, Poland Works in Windhoek, Namibia Family Accommodation/Portfolio Kolmanskop 1994 Digital photograph Museum purchase, 2014-30-1 Sands of time. Once a town thrived around the diamond mines of Kolmanskop, Namibia, but when its riches were exhausted, its residents abandoned their homes, hospital, offices, and shops. Slowly these structures are being returned to the earth as the surrounding sands swallow them. Namibia-based photographer Helga Kohl has returned repeatedly to this ghost town. In her own words, “I transformed myself into the past, and in so doing saw a life which somehow brought profound understanding to the present . . . One day I knew I was ready to capture the beauty once created by people and taken over by nature.”
Aida Muluneh b. 1974, Ethiopia Works in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Sai Mado (The Distant Gaze) 2016 Digital photograph Museum purchase, 2016-16-2 Visualizing memories. Aida Muluneh explores the links and ruptures between generations, as well as the imperfections and disconnects that shape personal and national experience. She says, “As women, especially as African women, we forget—and the world forgets—our positioning in history and religion and culture.” This work is inspired by the Amharic saying, Temetaleh beye, Sai Madi, Sai Mado, ye liinete eyene mouma ende beredo (As I waited for you in a distant gaze, my eyes melted like ice awaiting your return). For Muluneh, the cloud sky symbolizes the uncertainty of relationships, while the image behind the broken glass looks to a past made present through memories.
Diane Victor b. 1964, Witbank (now eMalahleni), South Africa Works in Johannesburg, South Africa Good Shepherd 2012 Smoke on paper Museum purchase, 2016-16-1 Up in smoke. In Diane Victor’s hands, the “good shepherd” is not a youth amidst his flock. Controlling the flame of a candle to draw with its smoke, she renders a mature man in a business suit, staring at a fire in which a house burns. A single lamb rests on his shoulder like a burden. It is unclear if he protects it or prepares it for the flames. This metaphoric work was “done just after the collapse of the banking world. There are always issues about people who we are meant to trust . . . who are meant to be doing best for their community but often cannot be trusted, who have alternative motives or agendas . . .”
Maïmouna Guerresi b. 1951, Pove del Grappa, Italy Works in Dakar, Senegal M-Eating, Sufi 2013, printed 2016 Lambda print on board Museum purchase, 2017-1-3 Divine mysteries. A devout Sufi, Maïmouna Guerresi fuses aesthetics and faith to create a distinctive feminist spirituality. She does not photograph women exclusively. In M-Eating, two men are seated across from one another at a table. Each wears a towering black hat to draw attention to the head as the site of one’s consciousness; one has a white line bisecting his face to mark the meeting place within each of us between life and death, and the known and unknown. Guerresi has described how in the photograph, “I analyzed the different aspects of the relationship between isolation and union in the moments that we meet around the table.”
Ghada Amer b. 1963, Egypt Works in New York, New York The Blue Bra Girls 2012 Cast and polished stainless steel Museum purchase, Women’s Initiative Fund, 2018-2-1 Stand up and fight.The Blue Bra Girls takes its name from the 2011 Reuters photograph of a veiled young woman whose blue bra was exposed as she was dragged and beaten during protests in Tahrir Square. The image went viral and quickly became a rallying cry for thousands of Egyptian women.
For Ghada Amer, The Blue Bra Girls is a tribute to all the women who have risked standing up for what they believe in. As she has said, “I had an idea for a sculpture in which women would look defiantly at the public. I thought it was important that they should all have their eyes open and be looking at the viewer. I also wanted the women standing, instead of lying down. Then the ‘blue bra girl’ incident took place and so I called the piece after that, as an homage to all those women who stand up for themselves and fight.”
Other initiatives
Pioneering Women Photographers in Africa, 1930s-1970s
The Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives (EEPA), National Museum of African Art, is working on Pioneering Women Photographers in Africa, 1930s—1970s. In support of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, the project will digitize and describe 14 collections created by women photographers in Africa! To learn more, click here
In 2018, the Smithsonian Institution launched American Women’s History Initiative. To learn more about other exhibitions, programs, and activities about women around the Smithsonian, visit: https://womenshistory.si.edu/about
I Am . . . Contemporary Women Artists of Africa is made possible by the Women’s Initiative, which is generously supported by Edward P. Bass and Sasha Camacho, Nancy McElroy Folger, Miyoung Lee, Paul Neely, the Sakana Foundation, Patty Stonesifer and Michael Kinsley, and Ronda Stryker and William D. Johnston. Additional support for textile conservation provided by the Coby Foundation.
I wanted us in Africa to look at what is our own
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