Zanzibar/​Black

Copied Barbara Chase-Riboud, Zanzibar/Black, 1974-1975, bronze with black patina, silk and wool over a steel armature, 82 × 30 × 27 in. (208.3 × 76.2 × 68.6 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2018.2, © 2017, Barbara Chase-Riboud; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Callery, LLC, New York, NY

Artwork Details

Title
Zanzibar/​Black
Date
1974-1975
Dimensions
82 × 30 × 27 in. (208.3 × 76.2 × 68.6 cm)
Copyright
© 2017, Barbara Chase-Riboud; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Callery, LLC, New York, NY
Credit Line
Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment
Mediums Description
bronze with black patina, silk and wool over a steel armature
Classifications
Subjects
  • Abstract
Object Number
2018.2

Artwork Description

Zanzibar/Black rises like a monumental ancient stele, yet this modern sculpture dismantles our expectations for this age-old form. Ribbons of bronze implausibly float above cascading skeins of wool and silk, seemingly disparate materials united by their black color. "It's not a weak material vs. a strong material so the transformation that happens in the steles is not between two unequal things but two things that interact and transform each other," the artist notes.

Award-winning author and sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud has lived in Paris since the 1960s, forging friendships with Alexander Calder, James Baldwin, Sheila Hicks, and other Americans abroad. In the sixties, she began creating "skirts" for her sculptures as a solution for what she called "the tyranny of the pedestal." She titled this totemic sculpture after the East African island off the coast of Tanzania that, for centuries, was an epicenter of the Arab slave trade. Her Zanzibar series was inspired by her epic poem, "Why Did We Leave Zanzibar?" (1969--70), a meditation on the long-reaching consequences of the slave trade and the history of resistance by those enslaved. 

Exhibitions

Media - 2019.15 - SAAM-2019.15_1 - 137377
Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women
May 31, 2024January 5, 2025
The artists in Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women mastered and subverted the everyday materials of cotton, felt, and wool to create deeply personal artworks.