Metro Pulse/Artbeat/Willie Cole and Renée Stout

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What:
Beyond the Frame: Willie Cole and Renée Stout

Where:
The KMA, 1050 World�s Fair Park Drive

When:
Through July 9, 2000

Artists Willie Cole and Renée Stout find the universal within the specific

by Heather Joyner

Almost 400 years have passed since a Dutch slave ship first dropped anchor in Jamestown, Va., initiating profound changes in the course our nation's history and culture. Art historian Richard J. Powell writes, "...following the irreversible impact of the transatlantic slave trade, the English 'Black', the French 'Noir', and the Spanish, Portuguese, and eventually Anglo-American 'Negro' became terms that differentiated a largely New World phenomenon of African diasporal peoples from their ethnic-specific ancestors and relatives." A mouthful perhaps, but Powell's statement refers to an imposed division between one's past and present that is crucial to subjugation. Stripping a person of what might be termed cultural memory renders their origins and ancestors meaningless; it robs them of their identity.

Writer Alex Haley's quest to find a Gambian "griot" who could trace his family's "roots" was an effort to regain knowledge slavery had taken away. African griot storytellers, singers, and artists are individuals entrusted with memorizing a people's history and keeping the past alive. Anthropologist William Ferris asserts, "Through story, song, and visual image, black art forms embody and restate the history of a culture... like the griot, [black artists] preserve memory with their voice and hands, and tend ancestral fires with their creative gifts."

Willie Cole and Renée Stout, the second pair of artists to grace the KMA's Beyond the Frame series of exhibits, are certainly doing their share to honor the past. Born in New Jersey in 1955, the year Rosa Parks inspired the Montgomery bus boycott, Cole studied at the Boston University School of Fine Arts and at the School of Visual Arts and the Art Students League in Manhattan. His work has appeared at New York's Museum of Modern Art as well as at various venues in the U.S. and abroad. Four years younger than Cole, Stout is originally from Junction City, Kan., and now lives in Washington, D.C. (after earning a B.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University). She, too, has exhibited widely. Both were children during a period of tremendous optimism regarding civil rights—the era of Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and a new sense of what it meant to be black in America. Although neither wishes to be "pigeonholed," they both create pieces tied to African-American history. Whereas Cole attempts to "Africanize" Western elements in the same way that Western Culture has borrowed from Africa, Stout often begins with objects used for African-based religious rituals. The clever use of a range of discarded materials unites the two artists and makes for a fascinating show.

Although a number of Cole's pieces are three-dimensional, all of his work possesses a strong graphic presence. Whether we're looking at two lawn jockey statues painted gold and "Yves Klein blue" or at "Stowage," a woodcut on kozo-shi paper suggesting the human cargo of a slave ship, Cole's creations are decidedly pared down to essentials. His intricate "Sunflower" composition made from triangular iron imprints on lacquered canvas, a sort of homage to Van Gogh, is simply brilliant. According to the KMA's Assistant Curator Nandini Makrandi, Cole uses both irons and ironing boards to reference African tribal shields and masks and "to capture the spiritual power and magic of African sculpture without literally duplicating it"—evident in Cole's "Perm-Press (hybrid)," resembling a fertility goddess whose buxom features are assembled from different types of steam irons. Says Makrandi, "The implication of the iron is strong—his mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother had all worked as domestics at some point...the artist's iron scorch pieces especially allude to the blacksmithing process and remind one that the irons represent more than just a non-traditional printmaking method. The physical process of heating the iron in a fire and branding the canvas gives a ceremonial feel to Cole's work, one that recalls ritual African scarification as well as tattooing by the slave master [to mark] his property." Cole himself has said, "When a piece gets to the point where all the parts are put together in the right way, it has a power of its own, and you know not to mess with it anymore."

Stout concerns herself with a different kind of iron. Her "Mantle In A House of Ogun," a semi-circular construction featuring a clock, other household items, and a gun, refers to the warrior-protector god of iron. Much as Cole acknowledges his relatives' former occupations, Stout celebrates her grandfathers' years spent working in steel mills and what she calls "their Ogun energy." The gun, jarringly casual in its homey setting, is nevertheless an object of danger and violence. "Trinity" also refers to family and features an exquisitely painted miniature portrait of the artist flanked by ones of her sister and mother. The work's altarpiece-like form with open door panels has Celtic knotwork designs stamped on metal to reference Stout's mixed heritage. A small glass cylinder containing soil is framed above a sentence reading, "Since I could not have the dirt from her grave, dirt from the land of her ancestors will have to do." Stout's other assemblages run the gamut of subject matter and include "Hellhound On My Trail," a piece dedicated to blues guitarist Robert Johnson. Another piece titled "Hoodoo'd (to Jesse Helms)" functions as a sort of creepy curse against the N.E.A.'s most outspoken opponent and contains an Ernesto Mercer poem with the line "Your penis is a beheaded rooster that only crows when the sun goes down." With its nail-studded heart, chicken foot, and skull, "Hoodoo'd" is a potent statement.

Both Stout and Cole are slated to present lectures at the KMA (the Sundays of May 28 and June 4 at 2 p.m., respectively). If what they have to say is as interesting as their art, we're in for a treat.