MARIJA_2018B

Black people are missing everywhere: on television, in politics, in Dutch movies,
blacks who have the leading role or black people in the streets in movies. It is changing,
look at the Sloggy ads, you suddenly see a black person in underwear, or in
other ads you see a black boy, but very obvious. In the arts it is more stereotype, you
don’t see so many black artists.
I would like more mixed exhibitions with artists from diferent backgrounds.
Again, I now used this kind of traditional objects, you could see it as traditional, but
I still don’t want to become that Dutch-African-woman-artist and so and so… don’t
want to be in this kind of box. I want to be seen as an artist and be part of the greater
picture of art and history worldwide.
July 2018 Kattendijke
Vigorous discussion
After this conversation I read the discussion about a painting in the Whitney Museum:
Open Casket by Dana Schutz (1976). A major riot broke out. The work is based
on wellknown photographs of Emmett Till’s unrecognizably damaged face in his
open coin. The 14-year-old black boy was horribly murdered by two white men in
Mississippi in 1955 after a white female shop assistant had falsely accused him of
sexually intimidation.
(translated from a Volkskrant article by Anne Van Driel 30 maart 2017)
The problem with Open Casket, according to some, is its creator: Dana Schutz is white.
And that makes her use of these images - singular proof of the lack of rights for
black America - for them as an ‘inappropriate
appropriation’. An improper appropriation
that must be removed from the museum.
After all, where does Schutz derive the right
to hijack a subject in which it is impossible
for her, from her privileged white position,
to empathize?
Compared to this kind of discussion the
conversation between Monika and me is
quite sweet and nice. I really don’t know
what my opinion would be in this. Would
I destroy my painting if I made it just to
make a positive contribution to history?
In a way I can understand that it is time to
keep your mouth shut and listen. It also
reminds me of the feeling I had when men
started to use textile in their art. It made
me angry at the time. Now I think: shouldn’t
art be a free area to create and research?
And we need humor, a power which
can open up.
Hero, 60 x 80 cm, 2012, oil-, acrylic, beads
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