Nka

NO BODY’S PERFECT
Kanitra Fletcher

Renée Green, Seen, 1990. Wooden platform, rubber, stamped ink, screen, motorized winking glasses, magnifying glass, spotlight, sound, 81.5 x 81.5 x 53.5 in.
Courtesy the artist and Free Agent Media

Journal of Contemporary African Art • 38–39 • November 2016

142 • Nka DOI 10.1215/10757163-3641788 © 2016 by Nka Publications

Published by Duke University Press

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H
ow do you see blackness? What does it look
like? Can it be shown? In seeming response
to such uncertainties, artists Renée Green,
Satch Hoyt, and Sheila Pree Bright forwent repre-
sentation of the black body altogether. In installa-
tion and photographic works—Seen (1990), Say It
Loud (2004), and Suburbia (2005–7), respectively—
they instead presented spaces for any body, black
or otherwise, within contexts that signify black
lives, histories, and experiences. he works airm
that the nature of blackness is not a given, while
they demonstrate ways in which it has come to be
regarded as such. Via texts, sounds, and objects the
artists challenge us to see not bodies but the cul-
tural constructions of and around them. Moreover,
Green, Hoyt, and Bright demonstrate that blackness
cannot be seen or shown by any body, or, rather, no
body is perfect.
heir elimination of bodies serves as a refusal
to perpetuate the simultaneous overexposure and
simpliication to which black bodies have been
historically subjected. Green, Hoyt, and Bright’s
unpeopled scenarios also allow us to recognize how
particular signs prompt the sight of blackness sans
the body or how items might be used as its represen-
tation. he exchange of black bodies with objects or
other igures invites viewers to physically and psy-
chically identify with black subjects or assess their
own identiication and expectation of them. he
works ask what might happen and what it means
when a nonblack person inhabits a putatively black
space or experience. Although blackness is oten
seen ahead and outside of works of art, is it opaque
or does it have multiple signiications? What are the
means and meanings of objects that represent black
identities? he absences or exchanges in the works,
therefore, reject the equation of and airm the dif-
ference between concepts and bodies of blackness.
American artist Renée Green’s installation Seen
speciically turns the tables of past mistreatment of
black women’s bodies onto the viewer. One person
at a time climbs onto a crude wooden platform
resembling a slave auction block, which serves
as a stage. Across the surface of the loor Green
stamped extracts from past accounts of Saartjie
Baartman and Josephine Baker. Otherwise known
as the “Hottentot Venus” and the “Black Venus,”
respectively, Baartman and Baker were two of the
Published by Duke University Press
most fetishized black women in European history.
As Lisa Gail Collins also observes, “Contemporary
artists frequently point to the saga of ‘the Hottentot
Venus’ as a deining moment in the representation
of black women in visual culture”—conditions that
Baker’s persona extended beyond the stage to ilm
and song. Accordingly, a sound loop of Baker sing-
ing “Voulez-vous de la canne à sucre?” (“Would
you like some sugar cane?”) complements the writ-
ings that are mostly demeaning and lascivious in
nature.
Critically, to examine the text, one must climb
onto the stage and consequently become trapped in
the display. Green positioned a loodlight to shine
onto the stage and a white screen at the opposite
end of the platform to project a silhouette of the
person’s igure for other gallery visitors to observe.
Further compounding the senses of voyeurism and
vulnerability, while walking up and down the stage
one encounters motorized winking blue eyes peer-
ing up at her from a hole in a loorboard.
he fear and discomfort generated by these
imbalanced relations of the gaze speak to the wider
social context of power and its relation to sight and
seeing. Moreover, rather than objectifying black
female bodies, Green turns the tables on specta-
tors and subjects them to treatment partially echo-
ing that endured by Baker and Baartman. In fact,
Baartman was “deceitfully promised a rapid and
wealthy return to southern Africa ater a short stint
of public displays in Europe.”1 hus, the tricking
of viewers to enter the display of Seen evokes her
experience.
Jennifer González also airms that “while the
experience of racial objectiication could never be
replicated by the installation, the artist provided the
phenomenological conditions for the mechanism of
this objectiication.”2 Green, therefore, inverts and
deconstructs the construction of the black female
body in visual culture. he apparatuses that typi-
cally create representations are represented instead,
inviting us to consider, like Michele Wallace does,
“what some have called the spectatorial imagina-
tion of the West, the gaze, the need to study and
examine the ‘other,’ fueled by the popularity of such
inventions and developments as photography, the
electric light bulb, popular journalism and ilm.”3
Baker and Baartman’s igures were not viewed
Fletcher Nka • 143
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Detail from Seen
simply on stage and screen; particular devices
mediated their appearances and the public’s views
of them.
In the absence of black female bodies, Green
presents the ways in which sight, sound, language,
and technology reify historical (mis)perceptions
of them. Seen illustrates González’s assertion that
“race discourse, in all its historical complexity, is
not reducible to visuality; visual representation
is merely one of the most powerful techniques by
which it operates.”4 One encounters multiple per-
spectives on and of black women within the work,
yet no actual black female body is on display. he
absences of Baker and Baartman highlight the func-
tions of the text, stage, screen, and lights that gen-
erate impressions and supersede actual presences.
hus, to reinterpret the title of the work, Baker’s and
Baartman’s bodies were “seen,” not just optically, but
also mentally. hey were understood in particular
ways based on factors beyond their corporeality.
Consequently, they bear meanings (such as those
stamped upon the stage) not of their own making.
Furthermore, the initial encounter with the
work prompts the surprise and disorientation of
the viewer who does not expect to go on display but
must do so to appreciate Green’s arrangement fully.
he viewer’s experience of the artwork moves from
typical observation to a performative dimension.
his shit alludes to the ways in which Baker and
Baartman had to enter speciic, contrived scenarios
to play roles for onlookers. herefore, images and
recordings of the women igure more as portrayals
of others’ desires than their actual personalities.
To underscore these circumstances, opposite the
144 • Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art • 38–39 • November 2016
Published by Duke University Press
loodlights the viewer produces a dark distorted
igure on the screen. In efect, the study of Baker
and Baartman entails the projection of one’s own
fears and desires onto a black body.
Moreover, as the viewer faces the eyes looking
up at her and the light glaring down on her, she
most likely self-consciously comports herself within
this environment. In this sense, her actions relect
the way such circumstances put forward crated
portrayals and coerced performances rather than
genuine personalities. Nonetheless, the continual
incorporation of individuals into the artwork to
assume the roles of Baker or Baartman heeds
Chandra Mohanty’s call to “look upward . . . [from]
the particular standpoint of poor indigenous and
hird World/South women, [which] provides the
most inclusive viewing of systemic power. . . . his
particular marginalized location makes the politics
of knowledge and the power investments that go
along with it visible.”5
Indeed, the writings on the loorboards are not
proof of black female alterity. but rather evidence of
a historical power imbalance. Accordingly, within
Seen one steps on and stands over them to structur-
ally overpower distortions of Baker and Baartman.
Although the viewer is still aware of the myths and
fallacies that lie beneath her feet, upon Green’s stage
she is able to move around and beyond them.
Individuals also ascend a platform in Afro-
British artist Satch Hoyt’s installation Say It Loud,
a monumental stack of approximately ive hundred
books. Relating to black diaspora art, history, and
culture, the texts appear in a pyramidal shape that
surrounds a stepladder and supports a microphone.
Playing in the background is a sound loop of James
Brown’s famous chorus “Say it loud! I’m black and
I’m proud!” However, the recording mutes the word
black to allow for others’ speeches.
Prompted by the pause in the music, speakers can
say what makes them “proud” or express themselves
in any way they choose and thereby translate “black”
into ininite meanings. As Fred Moten stated, “he
phrase, the broken sentence, holds (everything). . . .
he quickened disruption of the irreducible phonic
substance . . . is where universality lies. Here lies
universality: in this break, this cut, this rupture.
Song cutting speech. Scream cutting song.”6 It is in
the “break” of Brown’s lyrics that blackness becomes
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Satch Hoyt, Say It Loud, 2004. Books, metal staircase, microphone,
speakers, sound. Dimensions variable. Installation view in Radical Presence:
Black Performance in Contemporary Art at the Contemporary Arts Museum
Houston, 2012. Photo: Jerry Jones
Detail from Say It Loud
Published by Duke University Press
limitless and transformable. he interruption of the
song with speakers’ statements generates boundless
unpredictability that also speaks to a fundamental
paradox of racial identiication.
On the one hand, countless critics and scholars
have developed theories of blackness. he mag-
nitude of their output is conveyed by the tower-
ing presence of the stacked books that form the
artwork. On the other hand, the numerous texts
indicate the indeiniteness of the subject. hat there
have been so many approaches to blackness airms
the improbability of any stable or essential mean-
ing. Say It Loud’s format, therefore, encourages the
reinterpretation, if not the rejection, of established
concepts. Rather than being ofered for perusal, the
books are closed and repurposed as a podium to
invite the new ideas and words of others.
In this way the closures and omissions are not
denials of blackness; rather, Say It Loud denies
acquiescence to blackness, particularly the mono-
lithic notions popularized in 1968, the year Brown
released his recording and the height of the Black
Power movement. he various speakers’ individual
statements not only indicate the temporality and
variability of blackness, but also allude to the silences
and omissions within black nationalist discourses.
Hoyt’s eloquent description of his own back-
ground further underscores the contention that
Fletcher Nka • 145
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Sheila Pree Bright, Untitled 11 (Suburbia), 2005–7. Chromogenic color print, 58 x 48 in. Courtesy the artist

Say It Loud aims less at deining than personalizing
blackness. He states:
I was born in London to an Afro-Jamaican father and
a white English mother in the late 1950s. . . . As a
hybrid, one learns to navigate the marginal seas of
diference, to remain intact while loating between
the two poles. . . . In efect, we were deconstructing
race and class, inventing our own imaginary islands.
We, the disenfranchised, fragmented, and marginal-
ized youth—the black, brown, and beige vanguard
learning the ancient codes, speaking a new patois:
racialized shape-shiters, reinventing a new black
identity.7
Hoyt’s statement speaks to the ways people
contradict and individualize social classiications.
hus, he efectively collaborates with the speakers
in a way that reconstitutes this process as it mirrors
his past. he altar becomes an “imaginary island,”
and the igure of the speaker “shape-shits” as one
replaces the next. hroughout these changes, the
work becomes an ongoing demonstration of the
performative dimension of blackness.
As Maurice Berger attests, “he ‘performative’
encompasses the broader range of human enact-
ments and interactions—the performances of our
everyday lives, the things we do to survive, to com-
municate.”8 Accordingly, Hoyt’s personal statement,

146 • Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art • 38–39 • November 2016

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as well as that of each speaker in Say It Loud, suggests
that translations of blackness are not only normal,
but also necessary. hey are performative strategies
for inding one’s way through life. Furthermore,
they demonstrate that reinterpretations of black-
ness ultimately make it less restrictive and increase
its potentiality ater 1968 and for the future.
In Suburbia American photographer Sheila Pree
Bright shows how objects also play roles in the
performative dimension of blackness. he series
comprises forty 58-by-48-inch photographs of well-
appointed homes in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, a
city with a large aluent black population. Mostly
due to post–World War II “white light,” however,
the popular notion of suburbia is a residential area
composed of middle- and upper-class white families.
Bright’s series, therefore, points to the intersection
of race and class as it pertains to geographical space
in the United States. Moreover, the impact of her
series is not derived from any activity in the scenes.
She thwarts viewers’ expectations with rare glimpses
of unidentiiable occupants and the notable yet tacit
racialization of household objects.
he framework of Suburbia emphasizes the fear
and paranoia that lie at the basis of white light.
he scenes have a voyeuristic feel that comes from
their formal composition. For instance, it appears as
though Bright “cased” the home featured in Untitled
11. She shows the exterior of the house on a rainy
day from afar and partially behind a bush. In other
scenes, the occupants are blurred, concealed, or
fragmented in surreptitious shots that were taken
behind a door or a counter and in the relection of
a mirror. Bright’s camera igures as a tool of surveil-
lance, capturing a realm of American society that
has been largely invisible in mainstream media.
As if taken by a private investigator, many of
the images igure as snapshots—photographs taken
quickly and informally—to be used as evidence of
this seemingly foreign territory. he large scale of
the photographs also heightens the sense of voy-
eurism and gives the viewer the impression that
she is a detective entering these domestic spaces.
Lacking the returned gaze of protagonists, the
design of the scenes in Suburbia enhances their
realism. he viewer can imagine she has gained
access to a restricted area to investigate the nature
of middle-class black domesticity on an intimate
Published by Duke University Press
Sheila Pree Bright, Untitled 13 (Suburbia), 2005–7. Chromogenic color print,
58 x 48 in. Courtesy the artist
level. However, she must do so without observing
the appearance or behavior of the residents.
For instance, in Untitled 13, the entrance of a
home features a casual yet conscious display of
belongings. Chanel accessories are framed by a
large, elegant portrait of a black girl in the back-
ground and a sizable vase encircled by an African-
inspired motif in the foreground. hese elements
of tasteful decoration function as racial signiiers
to subtly indicate black ownership. hroughout the
series, the viewer receives other occasional clues to
the racial identity of the occupants, thereby airm-
ing Jennifer González’s contention:
Material culture of everyday life, such as . . . forms
of commodity production and consumption, partici-
pate in the construction of race discourse. . . . Objects
come to stand in for subjects not merely in the form
of commodity fetish, but as a part of a larger system
of material and image culture that circulates as a
prosthesis of race discourse through practices of col-
lection, exchange, and exhibition . . . Objects in other
words can become epidermalized.9
Bright’s series thus critically analyzes how one
reads race through toys (such as black dolls in
Untitled 3 and Untitled 6), publications (like a set
of magazines featuring Barack Obama on the covers
in Untitled 40), or novelties (including the black
Americana igurines displayed on a kitchen counter
in Untitled 34). he imagery raises questions about
Fletcher Nka • 147
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Sheila Pree Bright, Untitled 34 (Suburbia), 2005–7. Chromogenic color print, 58 x 48 in. Courtesy
the artist

Sheila Pree Bright, Untitled 12 (Suburbia), 2005–7. Chromogenic color print, 58 x 48 in. Courtesy the artist

148 • Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art • 38–39 • November 2016

Published by Duke University Press

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how and why the viewer might infer the racial iden-
tity of the occupants without sight of their bodies,
and furthermore, how and why that assumption
afects reception of the images. As Susan Richmond
explains, the series “demonstrates that attempts
to wrest narratives of identity—racial, familial or
otherwise—from photographs require extradiegetic
leaps. Resorting to knowledge and experience
beyond the image, some of these leaps jarringly
expose the viewer’s unconscious recourse to racial
assumptions.”10
What efect do the occasional blurred or frag-
mented appearances of bodies have on the viewer?
Is the sight of an occupant’s skin the efective culmi-
nation of an image? Does it serve as a conirmation
of or an inquiry into blackness? Suburbia suggests
that the black body does not answer questions; it
raises them. Similar to Lorna Simpson’s “anti-por-
traits” of the 1990s, which depicted black subjects
turned away from the viewer, Bright refuses iden-
tiications or visual consumption of the residents.
In so doing, we might (re)consider our desires for
subjects to perform or elicit some expression of
blackness.
hus, the objects perform rather than the
bodies. Despite the inference of social and psy-
chological tensions, as Bridget Cooks explains,
“there is little evidence of the drama of daily life.
. . . Figures are not performing . . . [and the pho-
tographs] do not solicit empathy from viewers. . . .
Instead, the banality of suburban life is pictured.”11
In other words, the unremarkableness of Suburbia
makes the series remarkable. Consequently, some
black viewers have complained that there are too
few indications of African American heritage or
identity in the work.12 Suburbia also might perplex
white viewers who assume or feel secure in notions
of their diference from black families.13
Nonetheless, the inhabitants of these homes,
when they are visible, appear comfortable in their
surroundings. In Untitled 12, a partially concealed
black woman lies on her bed to read an issue of
Business Week. Although the diagonals of her igure
visually counter the horizontal lines of the furni-
ture, she literally and iguratively appears at ease
as the deep red and gold fabrics envelop her.14 his
enfolding of her body visually airms her belong-
ing to this lifestyle and environment. Regardless of
Published by Duke University Press
others’ discomfort with the portrayal of her home
or her presence in Suburbia, she is at peace.
Bright’s minimization of black corporeality in
Suburbia further suggests that bodies would not
reveal any inherent truths about blackness. She
visualizes how the subjects represent themselves,
not their race. In scenes of everyday objects, Bright
demonstrates the diiculty in depicting something
distinctively or essentially black. In this sense, the
photographs ultimately represent the failure of their
implied investigation. he imagined voyeur who
searches through these homes to ind evidence of
an essential blackness comes up short.
As blackness remains unresolved in Suburbia,
this failure and the aforementioned criticism of the
series beg questions: Had Bright aimed to represent
a distinct black identity through these homes, what
would that project entail? What would it look like?
Would the depiction of more black bodies and cer-
tain items or symbols suice? Moreover, had Bright
“blackened” Suburbia, what would the series com-
municate? Would it deine blackness for viewers,
deceive them, or simply lead them nowhere?
Ultimately, in all these works Green, Hoyt, and
Bright demonstrate the shiting, dialectical nature
of blackness—its social, political construction and
its personal, psychological dimension—the under-
standings of which depend upon context and are
never inal. Nonetheless, despite this similarity,
they do take divergent approaches to matters of
black subjectivity that relate to the cultural contexts
in which the works were created. For instance, in
Seen, while one identiies with past and present
black female igures whose historical experiences
are recuperated in the process, these subjects also
appear passive. he work hardly suggests black
female agency or resistance. Lorraine O’Grady also
argues that in terms of “the establishment of sub-
jectivity . . . because [Seen] is addressed more to the
other than to the self and seems to deconstruct the
subject just before it expresses it, it may not unearth
enough new information.”15 In this sense, the activ-
ity within the piece does not alter, but rather repro-
duces ongoing historical conditions.
Rather than a shortcoming, this aspect relects
how the beginning of Green’s artistic career in the
late 1980s and early 1990s was inluenced heavily
by cultural and postcolonial theory in the writings
Fletcher Nka • 149
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of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall, Gayatri
Spivak, and other critics.16 In the making of Seen,
Green asked, “Who can speak? Where can they
speak . . . How is a ‘whom’ ever identiied . . . What is
given respect where? What is believed in where?”17
In other words, how does power relate to knowl-
edge? Further, how do we understand our subjective
positions in relation to these circumstances?18
In the early 2000s, rather than visualize difer-
ence and marginality or “talk back” to others, artists
oten refused or questioned identities. Hoyt’s work
does not assume a white participant, as opposed to
Green’s installation, which arguably expects one.
he tables do not appear to turn that much on a
black person within Seen, whereas all raced bodies
equally are consequential in Say It Loud, which calls
for diverse translations of blackness and personal
concepts of pride. Suburbia also poses questions to
any viewer of any race about whether or not and
how she identiies blackness beyond the body.
Speakers in Hoyt’s work loudly express their
opinions and personalities as well. Say It Loud
requires them to take command of the situation and
actively deine themselves. By upsetting the status
quo in the redeinition of blackness, the participants
enact change. While their speeches are addressed
to others, their actions are in service of personal
expression and cultural transformation, and not
just that of black participants, but all who enter
and consider the space of blackness that the paused
recording creates.
Suburbia also allows its subjects to express
themselves. Rather than being visually consumed,
they are in fact the consumers, as evidenced by
the displays of their wealth throughout the series.
Returning to Untitled 13, the subtle hues of beige
and tan in the foyer are interrupted by a bright pink
Chanel bag hanging from the banister of a staircase
above a pair of matching high heels. In Untitled 5,
luxurious, carefully arranged possessions—jew-
elry, perfumes, and crystal containers—sit on a
vanity table. In these images and others, Bright’s
representation of her secreted subjects via objects,
apparel, and furnishings comprises not only racial,
but also socioeconomic signiiers. he interiors
constitute self-conscious performances of class,
which broaden identiications of blackness. Further,
Suburbia does so in a manner that speaks more to
150 • Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art • 38–39 • November 2016
Published by Duke University Press
the aluence and advancement of black people than
to their repression.
Also in the early 2000s, helma Golden popular-
ized the term post-black. She aimed to classify what
she observed as an emergence of artists “who were
adamant about not being labeled as ‘black’ artists,
though their work was steeped, in fact deeply inter-
ested, in redeining complex notions of blackness.”19
Older approaches to blackness usually assumed a
stable black subject, culture, or personality; how-
ever, in the twenty-irst century, there is a wide-
spread sense that racial conditions have changed in
ways that make blackness no longer a foundation,
but rather “a question, an object of scrutiny, a pro-
visional resource at best, and, for some, a burden.”20
As Paul Taylor airms, “For post-black thinkers,
nationalist ideas about cultural self-determination
and about a unique African personality have been
supplanted by individualist and oten apolitical
aspirations, and by appeals to intra-racial diversity
and interracial commonalities.”21
Say It Loud its in well with this movement.
While Hoyt formally and conceptually structures
the entire piece around identiications of black-
ness, he eliminates the explicit statement of “black”
and invites us to question and create associations.
Suburbia also avoids overt declarations of race.
While the series presents an underrecognized divi-
sion of the black population, it also suggests many
commonalities between its residences and other
suburban homes of nonblack families.
Consequently, these artworks represent diferent
contexts of and approaches to the discursive
formation of black pasts and peoples. However,
they are not at odds. In a sense, Seen is the irst step
in a process that Say It Loud and Suburbia advance.
Seen alerts individuals to historical circumstances,
which the vocal and visual performances of Say It
Loud and Suburbia defy. Together the works show
processes of deconstruction and reconstruction,
which are necessary to forestall and complicate the
signiications of black bodies. Green, Hoyt, and
Bright deploy the absence and alteration of bodies in
order to encourage the contemplation of our fears,
desires, fantasies, and expectations of blackness.
he artists thus put the onus on the viewers to
substantiate ideas perceived ahead and outside of
the black body. In so doing, Seen, Say It Loud, and
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Suburbia demonstrate that in the representation of responded,] “hat’s the point! To show our commonality. . . . If we
could get past the stereotypes, we could see that.” Bentley, “Sheila
mythic, monolithic blackness, no body’s perfect. Pree Bright’s Look.”
14 Richmond, “Sheila Pree Bright’s Suburbia,” 19.
Kanitra Fletcher is a doctoral candidate in the De- 15 Lorraine O’Grady, “Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female
Subjectivity,” in Art, Activism, and Oppositionality: Essays from
partment of History of Art and Visual Studies at Cor-
Aterimage, ed. Grant H. Kester (Durham, NC: Duke University
nell University. She is currently based in Houston, Press, 1994), 272.
Texas, and serves as curator of video art for Land- 16 Elvan Zabunyan, “We Are Here = Nous sommes l̀,” in Renée
marks, the public art program of the University of Green and Nicole Schweizer, Reńe Green: Ongoing Becomings:
Retrospective 1989–2009 (Lausanne, Switzerland: Musée cantonal
Texas at Austin. des Beaux-Arts, 2009), 7–10.
17 Renée Green quoted in Alex Alberro, “he Fragment and
Notes the Flow,” in Reńe Green: Sombras y sẽales / Shadows and Signals
A signiicant portion of this essay was presented at the 2015 College (Barcelona, Spain: Fundací Antoni T̀pies, 2000), 26.
Art Association Conference in New York City. hanks to Professors 18 Ibid., 27.
Margo Crawford and Jessica Santone and the Nka editorial team 19 helma Golden, “Introduction,” in helma Golden et al.,
for their feedback and assistance with earlier versions. Freestyle (New York: Studio Museum in Harlem, 2001), 14.
1 Lisa Gail Collins, he Art of History: African American 20 Paul Taylor, “Black Aesthetics,” Philosophy Compass 5, vol. 1
Women Artists Engage the Past (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers (2010): 10.
University Press, 2002), 25. 21 Ibid.
2 Jennifer A. González, Subject to Display: Reframing Race in
Contemporary Installation Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008),
216. Her emphasis.
3 Michele Wallace, Dark Designs and Visual Culture (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 428.
4 González, Subject to Display, 5.
5 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited:
Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles,” Signs 28, no.
2 (2003): 511.
6 Fred Moten, In the Break: he Aesthetics of the Black Radical
Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 39,
43.
7 Satch Hoyt, “Hybrid Navigator,” Small Axe 32 (2010): 151–52.
8 Maurice Berger and Hans Haacke, Minimal Politics:
Performativity and Minimalism in Recent American Art (Baltimore:
Fine Arts Gallery, University of Maryland, 1997), 15.
9 González, Subject to Display, 5–6.
10 Susan Richmond, “Sheila Pree Bright’s Suburbia: Where
Nothing Is Ever Wanting,” Art Papers 31, no. 4 (2007): 20.
11 Bridget Cooks, “Pictures of Home: he Work of Sheila Pree
Bright,” Aterimage 36, no. 2 (2008): 17.
12 Richmond, “Sheila Pree Bright’s Suburbia,” 21. Bridget Cooks
also quotes Bright: “[A book publisher] explained to me that he
grew up during the Civil Rights Movement with Martin Luther
King, Jr. and that I did not have enough signiiers or clues about
African American culture in the work to show that these were
African American homes.” Cooks, “Pictures of Home.” 17. An
interview with Bright also mentions how, during the Santa Fe
Prize Photography Awards, “respected curators, consultants and
photo editor . . . ‘loved the pictures, but they said they didn’t have
enough signiiers in them to show that they were black homes.
What those comments showed me is how seriously a stereotype
is ingrained in a person’s mind. . . . hey expected certain things
to be there and they weren’t.’” Rosalind Bentley, “Sheila Pree
Bright’s Look at ‘Suburbia’ in an Unlikely Place,” Atlanta Journal-
Constitution, February 4, 2014, www.ajc.com/news/entertainment
/sheila-pree-brights-look-at-suburbia-in-an-unlikel/ndBtF/
(accessed August 1, 2015).
13 he aforementioned interview with Bright recounts, “Back
when Suburbia was shown in Santa Fe, one consultant . . . was white
and told the artist that he didn’t understand its point. he homes
pictured didn’t look any diferent from his home, he told her.” [Bright

Fletcher Nka • 151

Published by Duke University Press