Feast & Famine/Art & Activism - Luis Gonzalez

Luis Gonzalez

Acts of Resistance: Activist, Interlopers, and Pranksters SP 19

Professor Cacoilo

April 16, 2019

Feast & Famine/Art & Activism

Renee Cox is one of the most controversial African American artists working today using her own body, both nude and clothed to celebrate black womanhood and criticize a society she often views as racist and sexist. She was born on October 16, 1960, in Colgate, Jamaica, into an upper middle-class family, who later settled in Scarsdale, New York. Cox's first ambition was to become a filmmaker. "I was always interested in the visual" she said in one interview, "But I had a baby boomer reaction and was into the immediate gratification of photography as opposed to film, which is a more laborious project." From the very beginning, her work showed a deep concern for social issues and employed disturbing religious imagery. In her first one-woman show at a New York gallery in 1998, Cox made herself the center of attention. Dressed in the colorful attire of a black superhero named Raje, Cox appeared in a series of large, color photographs. In one picture she towered over a cab in Times Square. In another, she broke steel chains before an erupting volcano. In the most pointed picture, entitled The Liberation of Lady J and UB, Cox's Raje rescued the black stereotyped advertising figures of Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima from their products, labels. She is in the middle of Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima, and she has them by her hands. “An anti-capitalist can act anywhere, as there is no space that does not speak the values of capital” (Interventionist pg. 117). The use of appropriated imagery in this photograph works is showcasing the visual symbolism that Cox intends to pass across. This piece was created to show people that they can be liberated from things that have been subjected upon them like consumption of products that are advertised to be healthy for consumptions on advertisements, but there is always a dark side that is no illuminated. “Everyday life was changing, and so were the desires and dreams of a new generation, which was eager to articulate its own identity” (Seeing Power pg. 8). The clothing demonstrates a perspective of a role model often known as a superhero. This works to alter the stereotypical endeavors of presenting superheroes as being white and not black on most occasions. The photograph was featured on the cover of the French newspaper Le Monde. Lauren Greenfield’s series THIN is a photographic essay and a documentary film about the treatment of eating disorders. In 1997, while on assignment for Time, Greenfield began documenting the lives of patients at the Renfrew Center in Coconut Creek, Florida, a forty-bed residential facility for the treatment of women with eating disorders. She later returned to Renfrew to take more photographs and was eventually given access to film the daily lives of patients. THIN provides a window into the complicated and difficult process of treatment, the culture of rehab, and the experience of struggling with an eating disorder. The result is an experiential and emotional journey that allows a greater understanding of the difficulty of eating disorders, they are not simply about food or body image or self-esteem, but a tangle of personal, family, cultural and mental health issues. THIN brings the subject of eating disorders to the surface where we, as a culture, can begin to deal with this thought-provoking subject in our homes and schools. “Our age of manipulation produces on inexorable quandary” (Seeing Power pg. 97). THIN piles together large-scale portraits and documentary photographs, art and journals, interviews, video and narrative texts, educational facts and resources, to bring museum audiences a clear, compelling and kindly drawn look at a persistent cultural problem. Eating disorders are intensely intimate and disturbing secrets, as well as desperate, brutal cries for help. They most often originate in the lies and misleading of popular culture, and in the experience of individual girls and women with abuse and psychological stress and trauma. With THIN, Greenfield offers a portrayal of profound insight and understanding to reveal the hidden nature of an ironic and deadly danger of privileged society. The way that Renee Cox’s art piece of The Liberation of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben relates to my semester project is the way she infuses her ability of being role model. She demonstrates this ability by allowing her artwork to have a representation of what leadership should represent. This relates to my topic because we teach the kids in the community how to vouch for themselves and how to become independent. The project and the artwork both have similarities that are helpful in explaining the purpose behind art. The way Lauren Greenfield’s series THIN explains my semester project is the way she compares the difficulty of eating disorders to the challenging subject in homes and schools. In this case I’m relating it to the life difficulties that the youth bring with them when they enter the gym for the first time. The reason that many children join is because of the complications that they go through daily, whether it’s them having a disorder or them having problems at home. Greenfield explains the experience of struggling with an eating disorder and how it can lead to personal, family, and even mental health issues. Everyone goes through a struggle in life but being around the right people and being in a safe environment I truly believe it helps those who are in need to stay active and it helps prevent them from bringing any problems they might have back home. 

Renee Cox - The Liberation of Lady J and UB (1998)

Cox's Raje rescuing the black stereotyped advertising figures, Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima  

Lauren Greenfield's series THIN

Lauren Greenfield documenting the lives of patients 

Work Cited  

Thompson, Nato. Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century. Melville House, 2015. 

Sholette, Gregory, and Nato Thompson. The Interventionists: Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life ; MASS MoCA, 2004.