Soot and text
In this full gallery installation, I explore the cultural and social significance of
blackface minstrelsy—a theatrical form that experienced popularity in America
during the mid 1850s. My interest centered on creating a space to explore
questions such as, what it meant for a Black performer to imitate a White man’s
impersonation of “blackness.”
2001
Gallery 2, SAIC
20' x 20'
5 min., 53 Sec.
"Verlena Johnson critically connects the everyday and art by referencing folk and
academically trained reals of artmaking, the so-called high and low art that traditionally
connoted social and cultural stratification. She draws upon an age-old device, from the
realms of low art and every day life -- puppetry -- to take up in her work subjects of
political import and complex concepts of self-identity.
Thus, humor becomes a frequent medium, too, particularly black humor, the place where
what's funny meets what's painful. The puppet or human image in ostensibly joking form
is a remarkably articulate and disarming object, and it can be a mediator embodying the
characteristics that signify and classify people in the interchanges of everyday
experience. In such works, humor is an interface, intervening and mediating, bridging
realms of experience to establish dialogue."
Mary Jane Jacobs, dept., "Approaches," p. 2
verlenasroom@yahoo.com
under United States and international copyright law. The artwork may not be
reproduced, stored, or manipulated without written permission of the artist.