Performance with “Inside/Outside”

Senga Nengudi, Performance with "Inside/Outside", 1977, gelatin silver print, 40 × 29 in. (101.6 × 73.7 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Frank K. Ribelin Endowment, 2017.21, © 1977, Senga Nengudi

Artwork Details

Title: Performance with “Inside/Outside”
Artist: Senga Nengudi
Date: 1977
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: 40 × 29 in. (101.6 × 73.7 cm)
Copyright: © 1977, Senga Nengudi
Credit Line: Museum purchase through the Frank K. Ribelin Endowment
Mediums Description: gelatin silver print
Classifications: Photography
Subjects: Fantasy
Dress — costume
Performing arts — theater — performer
Object Number: 2017.21
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2017.21

Artwork Description

In this staged photograph, Nengudi situates her own body within the curving inner tube and bulbous stockings of her recently completed sculpture, Inside/Outside (1977). Stepping into the frame, she illustrates how this piece can double as a headdress, circling upward from her own head and hair.

Nengudi majored in fine art and minored in dance at California State University in Los Angeles, before spending 1966, the year between her undergraduate and graduate studies, at Weseda University, Tokyo. There she investigated parallels between avant-garde Japanese and African-American artists using ritual traditions in contemporary art. Her subsequent work would draw on this research, uniting objects and choreographed movements to create powerful experiences. After giving birth to her first child in 1974, Nengudi began using stretchy women's pantyhose to evoke the elasticity of the maternal body in sculptures that, like Inside/Outside, invite performer engagement.