On Accessing Art as an Amateur: Sophia Dawson’s “FREE ’EM ALL” (2010)
Welcome or welcome back, friends and readers! This is a new installation of a series of pieces that I started some years ago titled, On Accessing Art as an Amateur where I get inspired about art and write about it. I’m writing as someone who is not a art critic, just someone who has basic understanding of art periods, techniques and maybe a bit of color theory. This is me with one college class worth of instruction of some of the basic principles of art history with a deep love, of looking at art, talking about it, admiring and writing about it. Enjoy this new part in the series and feel free to read past entries!
First thing: the color scheme in Sophia Dawson’s “FREE ’EM ALL”must be discussed. The entirely of the piece is a mix of what looks like reds and oranges and the reddish color is the first part of the composition that stands out to me. It is loud. It is bold and it is eye catching. One could almost liken it to a sunset or a sunrise, depending on where you feel is best different times od day. Red, for one can point to several themes in a piece: passion, danger, excitement. Here, could the color red signal to urgency? The persons in this piece include what appears to a mother and child and behind the child lifted up in the woman’s hand is a poster of a child caught in a moment of movement.
Their hand looks to either be holding up a fist or perhaps holding up a poster or piece of paper — FREE THEM ALL , appears to be the wall, whether the message holds only that word or the rest of phrase was added later, I don’t know for certain. But it is important to note that FREE is in BLACK, while FREE THEM ALL is in that brilliant reddish orange color. The image of the child looks to be similar to what one might have seen on posters and signage from decades and eras passed. The reddish/black color scheme immediately brought to mind Black Panther Party posters of the 1960's.The other touch of colors are the bluish blend of the woman’s clothing and the white of the stripes of the infant’s clothing.
Perhaps the most curious thing about this piece is how it might be interpreted as incomplete: the child in the middle of the piece has no face. No facial features. The older child in the poster does. But this baby does not. The woman holding the child has facial features in profile. Also the area under the woman, may it be her lap or a couch of other seated area she’s sitting upon are rough lines, not painted on or filled in with another medium.
This could point to a number of interpretations: Black children are often nameless and faceless to society, to authority figures — but never to their mothers? Black mothers and female presenting and identifying persons have work to do in allowing their children to have more autonomy in their own lives?
Maybe someone may even come to read FREE THEM ALL as a piece speaking to the identity crisis an young person may have as a child of a parent of family member who is a known activist? And some activists have come to be seen as more celebrity like figures in this day and age of social media, being invited to social events and live television show taping and the like. Perhaps this piece is the artist’s call to action — on canvas?
Perhaps this piece is the artist’s call to action — on canvas? A visual piece that with each day, Black women and Black mothers wake up and pour into their children and the children in their communities they nurture?
Perhaps Dawson’s piece is the sun rising on Black homes and households with Black women and femmes waking up to do to the activism and grassroots organizing that they are known to do from abolition to the civil rights movements to women and human rights movements to the Black Live Matters era and beyond.
In the ongoing fight against injustices from everything from police brutality to legislature on reproductive rights to prison reform, there are countless Black folks who are women, who are femme presenting and identifying persons doing the work and nurturing the next generation.
It is my greatest and most sincere hope to see more artwork in paintings and beyond in showing nuanced interpretations of mothers and their children- especially by Black women artist and QTBIPOC artists as Black motherhood, Black family life and Black activism are always images I want to see — in museums, on the page and in real life.
BIG shout-out to the Artists of Colour twitter which is how I discovered this amazing piece!
Sophia Dawson is a Brooklyn based visual artist who has dedicated her life’s work to exposing the stories and experiences of individuals who are striving to overcome the injustices they face. See more of her her on her website here.
See more in this series: On Accessing Art as an Amateur: Dominique Moody’s “Ancestral Praise House” (1996)
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