Four Womxn: New Musings on Blackness
Four Womxn: New Musings on Blackness explores themes of Black identity, womanhood, and personal history through a variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, and photography. The exhibition aims to challenge traditional narratives and offer new perspectives on the complexities of Blackness. Each artist brings a unique voice, creating a powerful dialogue about race, gender, and representation.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 465 Huntington Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115. Runs through November 15, 2024
Exhibition Description
Grounded in a Black lesbian gaze, Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola’s Twerk Villanelle (2019) engages visitors textually in the space. Video installations by Shanequa Gay, Le’Andra LeSeur, and C. Rose Smith continue, each evaluating the different experiences of Black womxn. Gay’s The Crooked Room (2018) combines distorted video and photography to convey the unsettling and unifying state of living in the United States as a Black women. In White Out (2018), LeSeur examines the effect of navigating a world dominated by predominantly white spaces on Black queer womxn like herself. Influenced by contemporary fashion, queer theory and 19th-century photography, Smith’s Untitled no. 000 (2020) considers how a white cotton dress can signify hierarchy, ethics, and control.