Re-Living Memories: Picturing Death

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth century, lynching and violent deaths appear as recurring representational themes in work produced by artists of African descent in the United States. The theme of lynching is the most disturbing to view and the most painful to discuss of all the themes to emerge in the work of Black artists. Despite the sensitivity of the subject, or possibly because it is so challenging, Black women artists, as Sandra Rowe has observed, frequently explore the expressive possibilities of lynching. As an artistic theme, lynching and violent death has a tenacious hold on the expressive imaginations of African American women. Consequently, these horrific images surface in the work of each new generation of artists and appear in the art of women working in a broad range of mediums.