Patricia Eunji Kim

This project brings together the work of African American artist Augusta Savage (1892–1962), Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), and Cuban artist Ana Mendieta (1948–85), who were all active in the United States and Europe throughout the twentieth century. Each of these artists appropriated narratives from Classical mythology by representing the bodies of non-white women in their visual reinterpretations, including sculpture, installation, and performance works, that primarily survive through their documentation. Savage sculpted Amazons as Black women in ephemeral clay; Kusama made her own “yellow” body one of the main attractions in her performance installation, Narcissus Garden; and Mendieta’s performance work included conceptual engagements with Black Venus, a Cuban creole symbol of anti-slavery and feminine beauty. Each of these artworks primarily endure through their documentation, raising archaeological questions around looking at art after it’s “gone.” Grounded in archival work, this project consults a range of photographs, artists’ writings, and reviews to excavate the traces of their monumental, ephemeral work. My work thus builds on methodological conversations within art historical and classical reception studies while drawing on race-oriented feminist frameworks to inform my analysis. Historical studies have discussed neoclassical visual culture’s role in reaffirming whiteness, imperial projects, and national identities. Likewise, Black classicisms and postcolonial studies have focused on classical receptions in literature. Building on these discourses, my project illuminates the ways in which these women made themselves visible as both subjects and artists within narratives that are associated with the canon of “Western civilization.”