Pictured above: the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum on Mount Holyoke College’s campus in South Hadley, MA.
By Mariam Keita ’24
Arts & Entertainment Editor
Just as Friday’s exhibition examined Blackness in space, three Black MHC students examine what it means to celebrate Blackness in a predominantly white educational space.
A Black woman in an intricately patterned quilted gown examines herself using a hand-held mirror. The other hand rests delicately on her temple. Her face is frozen in a state of self-analysis.
This photograph, titled “I Looked and Looked and Failed to See What so Terrified You,” is just one image from artist and photographer Carrie Mae Weems’ series “The Louisiana Project.” Weems’ piece was the concluding image in the student-led guided art tour “Through Their Eyes: Blackness Across Media,” which took place last Friday, Feb. 5.
Cortnei Edwards ’22, one of the student guides and a coordinator for the event, spoke about some of the things that inspired its creation. “In my sophomore year of college, I took two classes with Professor Kimberly J. Brown, and she uses a very integrative model of multimedia,” she explained. “I thought it would be great to incorporate that into the museum because you’re so used to seeing things in a still aspect. I thought it would be great to see them in a different way.”
As a part of Mount Holyoke’s Black History Month programming, this event was a collaboration between the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and the Association of Pan-African Unity. “Through Their Eyes” highlighted five different Black artists — Weems, David Driskell, Zanele Muholi, Mary Lee Bendolph and Faith Ringgold — all of whose various works are currently on display throughout the Art Museum. The theme of the event was “Black in space.”
For Ziyadah Zeigler ’23, “Through Their Eyes” was an introduction to Black art history.
In high school, Zeigler took a course that discussed some art history. “It was mainly white art history and less of Black art history,” Zeigler said. “I think [the Weems’ piece] resonated with me a lot because I feel like that piece focused on beauty. It made me question how Black women view our beauty standards. Does [a Black woman’s] beauty standards come from other Black women, does it come from Black men, or does it come from white people or non-Black people? It made me question, ‘How do we see ourselves?’”
Kay Brown ’24, who also attended the programming on Friday, has spent years familiarizing herself with Black art history.
“[My] art history background? For me, that’s being a nerd and researching. I’m a writer, and that’s always my first instinct, but I have also dabbled in all the other art forms like dance. I play four, maybe five instruments. When I’m in these fields where they’re definitely more filled with white people, I’ve always found myself searching for representation and different stories,” Brown said. “Naturally, as a Black woman, you just have to do that yourself. I would just research people who looked like me because [the BIPOC artist] experience serves as a guidance for everyone else’s experiences.”
For Brown, “Through Their Eyes” was more of an opportunity to find community than a learning experience.
“The works of art that they chose were really interesting. For me personally, after the first artist, I didn’t really find [“Through Their Eyes”] that informative or that much more engaging because I already knew the other artists,” Brown said. “They chose artists that were kind of more well known, like Faith Ringgold. I was able to look at a piece and go, ‘Oh yeah, that was Faith Ringgold,’ or ‘That was a Carrie Mae Weems’ piece,’ but I still found the dialogue to be the most interesting part of the event — the conversations that we were able to have. I really appreciate how they went into historical context about each piece. That’s important when you’re looking at art, to take it in, its whole experience.”
Beyond the confines of the 28 days of Black History Month, several Black students at Mount Holyoke College are examining what it means to celebrate Black history at a predominantly white institution.
For Zeigler, the answer to this question is layered.
“[Celebrating Black history at a PWI means] taking back our space and showcasing our history to everybody that’s probably never heard anything about [Black] history except for MLK [and] Malcolm X,” Zeigler said. “I’ve never been shy about speaking about or showing my pride in being Black or Black history. I just do it unapologetically and hope that everybody else is going to be accepting of [my unapologetic Blackness] as I would of other people’s cultures.”
Brown’s view of what it means to celebrate Black history at a PWI is similar to Zeigler’s, though Brown disagrees on the best way to execute this idea in practice.
“For me, it’s acknowledging that I’m here because of my ancestors,” Brown said. “I just show up in my most authentic way without feeling pressure to act a certain way or speak a certain way or to educate white people on campus about my own history.”
“I think it’s definitely a balance between just … being you as a Black woman versus feeling the need to embody all Black people and show us in a very specific way and be willing to preach about all of your struggles all the time in classes. I feel like [finding a balance], that’s really difficult,” Brown added.
While celebrating Black history might look a little bit different for everyone, Edwards looks forward to participating in some of the other Black History Month programming taking place throughout February.
For Edwards, Black History Month is “a great time to reflect on appreciating that we [Black people] are able to be Black and be so creative and invested in our identities and create our own communities because of that [Blackness]. Not necessarily because of our similar struggles but because of the passion that we have for the industries that we’re invested in.”
All of the pieces displayed in Friday’s show are currently available for virtual viewing through the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. If you are interested in viewing them, visit artmuseum.mtholyoke.edu.