There are interventions and then there are interventions.
I’m never short on inspiration for creating art. Recently, inspiration came from the creative genius of Beyoncé and Jay Z’s music video for their 2018 song “Apeshit.” We watched it in my slavery course.
Filmed in the Louvre 🔺, the video features the couple and (mostly female) Black dancers—“an embodied intervention of Western Art” (A. Thomas) and of its symbols of white authority (see below).
Why watch it in my slavery class?
There is only one painting in the whole video without an intervention: “Portrait d’une Négresse,” which appears toward the end, alone.
It’s a portrait of a Black woman in her natural beauty—dignified and graceful, not exoticized.
We’ve been learning about slavery in Guadeloupe. The woman in the portrait was brought to France from Guadeloupe as an enslaved servant.
In 1794, the French Revolutionary Government temporarily abolished slavery… Napoleon reinstated it in 1803. French colonists (like those in Guadeloupe) refused to follow, but news of abolition spread and large numbers of enslaved women and men fought together for their freedom.
The woman in the portrait was freed in 1794 in France and sat for this painting in 1800. She gazes directly at the viewer (see above) as she occupies the traditional portrait position of upper class white women.
♦️ La “Négresse” is herself an intervention of symbols of white authority.♦️ Beautiful.
Much peace,
Beth 🕊️