vanessa german recites a poem with an audience member's sweater around her neck. Photo courtesy of Laura Shea.
By Lenox Johnson ’24
Copy Chief & Arts & Entertainment Editor
In cultivating “THE RAREST BLACK WOMAN ON THE PLANET EARTH,” artist and activist vanessa german set out to make something living. A branch of Skinner Museum 75 — Mount Holyoke College Art Museum’s commemoration of the Joseph Allen Skinner Museum’s 1946 bequest to the College — german’s exhibition explores decolonization by means of intellectual and spiritual emancipation. “vanessa german — THE RAREST BLACK WOMAN ON THE PLANET EARTH,” debuts one year after artist Lenka Clayton’s MHCAM solo exhibition, “Comedy and Tragedy,” the first installation in the series. german’s Patricia and Edward Falkenberg Lecture, “Artist Talk: The Concert with vanessa german THE RAREST,” took place on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022, in Chapin Auditorium.
The echoing drums of the Five College West African Music Ensemble, planted in the foyer of Mary Woolley Hall, rang throughout the packed house. Following a land acknowledgment, speaker Kimberly Shawn FP ’16 addressed the Mount Holyoke community, christening german’s body of work as a “perfumed embrace” in Black artistic expression. Her exhibition video, “vanessa german is THE RAREST BLACK WOMAN ON THE PLANET EARTH” (2022) enveloped the auditorium, featuring a rapping german clad in a flowing pink dress, a salmon beanie and chunky gold hoops. In the film, german journeyed throughout Skinner Museum, narrating her movement through the space as she ventured to touch each of its curiosities — ranging from a 1763 antique gun to pyrite to meticulously-preserved literature. In doing so, german became the first person in history to touch each of the nearly 7,000 objects in the collection.
As a Fat, Black, queer woman, german’s life force — her rarity — is precious, but precarious. In her exhibition, she claims a form of ownership. “[It] began as a bid to be clever — the concept to decolonize this old, strange place, to recontextualize its current narrative as a force that could change the statistical realities of my fate,” german said in “vanessa german is THE RAREST BLACK WOMAN ON THE PLANET EARTH.” She continued, “As a Fat, Black, queer woman in these United States, the numbers don’t look good for health, wealth, education, love or even keeping a body like mine safe.”
german interacted with each of the museum’s items, and began to wrestle with the possibility of decolonizing a collection — chiefly, she asked, to whom does this responsibility fall? As she endeavored to touch each object, she noticed, each one touched her back. Her work evolved into a radical, emancipatory process through which objects are not merely repurposed, but their histories are rewritten. german morphed into a living artifact, and born from her feat is her MHCAM-termed “MUSEUM OF EMANCIPATORY OBJECTS,” on display at the College until May 28, 2023.
Upon the Sept. 2 opening of “vanessa german — THE RAREST BLACK WOMAN ON THE PLANET EARTH,” assistant professor of dance Shakia Barron, who teaches “Black Dance Culture,” offered her students a challenge. Each individual would create a piece of art — ranging from dance, to visual art and poetry — in response to german’s body of work. In her speech, Kayla Samuel ’23, a dance department liaison and student of Barron’s, introduced a sequence of these interpretative responses from a student’s short film screening to a poetry reading inspired by german’s work. The evening grew into a flowing succession of dynamic movement and expression as a legion of Barron’s students rose from within the audience to make their way onstage. In tandem, the troupe got down to the likeness of Missy Elliot and Ms. Lauryn Hill.
“The event showed how integrated into the campus community the project and the exhibition has become,” Aaron Miller, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum associate curator of visual and material culture and Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act coordinator, stated in an interview with Mount Holyoke News. “So many people put so much into the evening and I felt like their amazing contributions and the turnout reflected the [campus’] reception of the show.”
As the music slowed, the house lights flashed on, illuminating german’s careful promenade throughout the audience. Following a moment of pause, german joined in with meditated movement and made her way onstage as the drums crescendoed. Unconfined, she began to clutch her chest, swing her dress side to side and stomp. She yelled a repeated, but erratic sequence of “hello!”s. Pulling her dress over her head, she resigned to the floor, throwing rose petals around her place of rest. Following an exchange of “I love you”s with her stagemate, german frolicked about the platform, inviting audience members to approach the apron and be showered with flower petals.
german’s objective is not to perform decolonization. This, she shared during the talk, is the job of the colonizer. Her true aim in reimagining the Skinner Museum collection is to perform emancipation. “I’m not really the ‘RAREST BLACK WOMAN ON THE PLANET EARTH,’” german confessed onstage. She supposed that decolonization doesn’t require her to become a novelty. Instead, it mandates she unabashedly take up space. In an interview with Mount Holyoke News, german detailed her resolution to “make something that is … alive.”
Following an impromptu poetry recitation for one patron’s broken heart, Jean Klurfeld ’24, a Skinner Museum employee, audience member and the first among few to raise their hand, ventured alone to the edge of the stage to pose a question. “My mind went totally blank standing there at the mic. I didn’t know what she was going to say or do at all, I just knew that one of my favorite artists was right in front of me,” she said.
At Klurfeld’s request, german shared with the audience the first piece of artwork she ever made — her “heartbeat out of her mother’s womb.” She spontaneously took on the role of the inquirer, begging questions of Klurfeld and the audience like, “Is it hard to be white in public?” Compounding her momentum, she told Klurfeld she wanted the very sweater off of her back, to which she readily complied. german strutted about the audience with her newly-coveted garment fashioned around her neck.
“I hope [the audience] could feel the connection [german] had with me,” Klurfeld said. “After the show at the reception, she came up to me and said, ‘Forever and ever, you in a bra and jeans and me in anything,’ and hugged me. I told her she had to keep the sweater. There were no two ways about it.”
Maeve Kydd ’24, an art studio major, visited german’s exhibition in her “Advanced Studio” course this September. Like many who have encountered her work, Kydd reckoned with the gravity of german’s re-creation. “[german’s] exhibit and artist talk were really interesting [in that I saw] how she repurposed and used elements of the Skinner collection to form her own artworks,” Kydd said. “Her presence as an artist was so powerful and inspiring in her work.”
Miller hopes “vanessa german — THE RAREST BLACK WOMAN ON THE PLANET EARTH,” will continue to catalyze meaningful discourse and derivative works. “I hope that visitors to the Museum, and students in particular, will take away with them the feeling of healing and collaboration that vanessa intended,” Miller said. “I think that [german’s] project is going to have a lasting connection with this campus and the Museum and I hope that some of the work will become part of the permanent collection.”
german’s words remain boldly inscribed in the Harriet L. And Paul M. Weissman Gallery of MHCAM. “THE RAREST BLACK WOMAN ON THE PLANET EARTH was born in this space, in the quaking, emergent space between de/colonization and emancipation to be both IN the knowing of it and UNDONE from the continual breaking of it, simultaneously — to be released into the expansive agency of one’s own humanity,” the walls read.
“I’m so happy I had [this] experience,” Klurfeld said. “It was surreal and ethereal and just full of joy. … Thank you to everyone who made it possible — and thanks to vanessa.”