ARTIST STATEMENT
In a culture that imprints the idea that being male and being white are most worth visibility, the genius and power of Black woman is our ability to manipulate that imposed invisibility. To survive erasure through white supremacy is to be able to control how you are seen and perceived by white people, to control the visual narrative of “self.” As a Black woman I have learned to conjure invisibility at will, controlling the underlying truth of my power. Black brilliance is the ability to conceal everything of ourselves, for ourselves, while holding a mirror up to the corruption of our culture. My art is both monologue and ongoing dialogue. It is a visual exploration of the question “what if I show you this thing through my eyes, speak your story with my mouth this time? I have always been haunted by the idea of the Middle Passage. The unimaginable horror faced by Africans forced to journey to the Americas. La Negra Ophelia casts herself into the ocean. She moves herself to the center of her own story. It is not the tragic romanticism of Hamlet’s Ophelia, a character so cast to the side of that story, defined by her frailty and madness. The story of my Ophelia evokes an idea of the terror of choice, of death by drowning that is uniquely part of the African American experience. I imagine her actions a final effort to control her invisibility by any means necessary.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jeanette Woods is a multidisciplinary artist, journalist and documentarian who specializes in creating participatory media collaborations between newsrooms and communities. Her goal is to amplify the stories of groups and individuals who are marginalized and stigmatized by reporting from biased news media and facilitate partnerships between media and communities that open up the potential for reimagining narratives on both sides In her art, Jeanette examines ideas around representing narrative traditions from Black culture —like call and response — visually. Her art also investigates the possibilities of recasting and subverting verbal narratives symbolic of whiteness into imagery specific to the African American experience.
© Jeanette Woods