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Global cultures 1980–now
Course: Global cultures 1980–now > Unit 1
Lesson 10: Figuration, the body, and representation- Identity Politics: From the Margins to the Mainstream
- Stephanie Syjuco, The Visible Invisible
- Wangechi Mutu, Preying Mantra
- Wangechi Mutu, The NewOnes, will free Us
- Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present
- Rineke Dijkstra, Odessa, Ukraine, August 4, 1993
- Maryam Hoseini's Every Day Abstractions
- Jordan Casteel Paints Her Community
- Luchita Hurtado's body of work
- Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence, Women of Allah series
- Kehinde Wiley, Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps
- Kehinde Wiley, Ice T
- Kehinde Wiley, Rumors of War
- Yinka Shonibare, The Swing (After Fragonard)
- Shonibare, The Swing
- Freud, Standing by the Rags
- Kiki Smith, Lying with the Wolf
- Kiki Smith Quiz
- Catherine Opie, Figure and Landscape series
- Stefanie Jackson, Bluest Eye
- Amy Sherald, Precious Jewels by the Sea
- Michelle Browder, Mothers of Gynecology
- Douglas Coupland, Terry Fox Memorial
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Michelle Browder, Mothers of Gynecology
Michelle L. Browder (with Deborah Shedrick and a team of artists), Mothers of Gynecology, 2021, found metal objects and other media, roughly 15 feet high (Mission for More Up campus Montgomery, Alabama, © Michelle L. Browder)
speakers: Michelle Browder and Beth Harris. Created by Smarthistory.
Want to join the conversation?
- I’m traumatized… 😱
What did these women do to deserve that??(1 vote)
Video transcript
(jazz music) - [Beth] I'm in Montgomery, Alabama, standing with Michelle Browder, looking at her amazing sculpture
that honors three women. His sacrifice has been lost to history, Anarcha, Betsey and Lucy - [Michelle] So Anarcha was 17 at the time of her first experimentation, there was a vesicovaginal fistula. - Marion Sims, a doctor-
- Mm-hmm. - in the early part of the 19th century, decided to try to cure this, and used enslaved women's bodies- - Mm-hmm.
- in order to find a cure, but also very much to
promote his own career. - [Michelle] In some arenas he's known as the father of modern gynecology, but then if you're aware of what he did, he's known as father butcher. - [Beth] And Anarcha was the first patient to be brought to Sims who
suffered from fistula, the other 10 or so women that he experimented on
were all enslaved women, who he purchased or rented, of population who had absolutely
no choice in the matter. This is before the
development of anesthesia. - [Michelle] Mm-hmm. - [Beth] So these women
were operated on, sutured, all without anesthesia.
- Anesthesia. People make the argument, oh, well, they didn't
have anesthesia then, it's still, it was a
crime against humanity. - [Beth] And it was something
that white male doctors felt entirely privileged, and had a right to do-
- Mm-hmm. - to black women's bodies-
- Mm-hmm. - [Beth] and not something that they felt they had a right to do
to white women's bodies. - Right. 'Cause there was a notion out there that black women had a
high tolerance for pain, and or that they didn't feel pain at all, or that black people had thicker skin. This lie that was told. And so these doctors were able to do whatever they wanted to. - The transatlantic slave trade- - Mm-hmm.
- was outlawed in 1808, but that meant it was
all the more important for the enslaved women who were here to have more babies. - [Michelle] If you're no longer bringing enslaved Africans over to be enslaved, how do you replenish your stock? You make these women have children. - [Beth] They had trouble
after their pregnancy with something like a fistula
- Mm-hmm. - [Beth] that needed to be repaired so that they continue to have babies and enhance their value to their enslaver. So let's look closely
at the three figures. Each figure is individualized. - [Michelle] We did that
because each one of them have their own identity. On the back of Betsey you
could see the scarification, you could see the bodies of men, and then on Anarcha around her legs, there are bodies of people, and then around Lucy, there's bodies around her weight. So that represents the slave ship. And if you notice their
backs are straight, there's a posture of beauty
about each one of them. - [Beth] Anarcha in the
front raises her head, - Mm-hmm.
- Arches her neck, and looks up. - [Michelle] Because if you can imagine being in a horrific situation like this, you gotta have some kind of
faith that one day it will end. And so she's in a
constant state of prayer, and each one of them
has an adinkra symbol. And her symbol says, Supreme God, Betsey's is strength, and then Lucy, is that of friendship 'cause they formed a friendship. On Lucy you can notice the designs on her back
represent the whippings, the beatings. - [Beth] I also see
chains and other things that remind me of torture.
- Yes. Well her hair, made of bicycle chains. - [Beth] They have these porous surfaces that suggest the penetrating tools, and gaze of the white
men who operated on them. And then there's a fourth
part on the pedestal, the same shape as the space-
- The hole, mm-hmm. - [Beth] that's been removed from Anarcha. And so we have a displaced womb. - That wound was done by Deborah Shedrick, black woman artists here in Montgomery. She wanted to show the trauma to the womb. - [Beth] Well, I noticed inside specula, scissors, chains.
- Mm-hmm. which represents the bondage
of not being able to be free. - They're cutoff at the arms-
- Mm-hmm. - [Beth] and legs. - [Michelle] Well, they
didn't have the capacity to help their situation. Sure, they could've killed themselves, but they chose to continue to live. And now because of their lives, other lives are now being saved
because of the procedures. - [Beth] Today, these procedures help cure thousands of women. One of the things I notice
is just how embellished the figures are. And I recognize tools like wrenches-
- Mm-hmm. - [Beth] or scissors, but there's also beautiful
decorative forms, flowers and butterflies-
- Yes. - [Beth] and things that I associate with femininity. - [Michelle] So everything that you see were discarded items, but they still add value. And I think it speaks to the situation in which they found themselves, they were stripped of
humanity, their identity, and so the thought was to
give them some identity. So the band two knots-
- Yes. - [Michelle] the braids, the cornrows. - [Beth] And Betsey is also inscribed with names of very important women. - [Michelle] You have women
like Big Moma Thornton, you have Augusta Savage, Fannie Lou Hamer, Tamika Mallory, and Barbara Ross-Lee, you have Eartha Kitt, you have Harriet Jacobs. And so each one of these names are either enslaved women or women who have struggled through the civil rights movement or women who are making progress today. - [Beth] What we've done over the last hundred years or more is make monuments to white men, that are very fraught leaving these women out. It's tragic. - [Michelle] But monuments must change and they're changing, and it's taken a creative
approach to do it. But I think now the
season is ripe and ready to change the narrative using art. - [Beth] So even if the old monuments and there is one right nearby-
- Mm-hmm. - to Mr. Sims-
- Mm-hmm. - [Beth] doesn't come down, we still have your monuments. - [Michelle] Absolutely. That's what we're hoping that people will get from this, is the history behind it. And that's not what you're gonna get from these other statutes around the city. You're not gonna get the real education as to what happened. (jazz music)