The Legacy of Soul

What does it mean to reclaim the soul of a symbol? For generations, Black American artists have taken images once used to oppress and turned them into powerful expressions of pride and resilience, from Betye Saar’s transformative assemblages that reframe images of racial stereotypes with defiance, to Nina Chanel Abney’s expressive works that capture the dynamics of everyday life from family cookouts to jazz, hip-hop, and gospel. These acts of reclamation honor the past while creating a future where Blackness is celebrated in all its complexity and strength.

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“Sometimes I can feel a sense of history with objects,” Saar tells me, “as if I’m connected to a particular place or time or the person who used to own it.” In this current climate, this sentiment feels as pressing as ever. I was raised surrounded by artists who similarly used their craft to interpret such ancestral narratives. My mother began working as the curator at Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California, when I was just 5 years old. During long summer days, I would wander between her office and the gallery's studio. Within the space I discovered artists like Rosena Finister, a Louisiana-born painter whose depictions of the South echo the stories of her foremothers, and William Scott, a San Francisco-born artist whose utopian depictions of Black cities of the future radiate with light, color, and possibility. 

Saar and her peers such as David Hammons and Faith Ringgold witnessed the city’s racial oppression and artistic renaissance pushing up against each other and turned to creative outlets to process their frustration. “At that time, there were a lot of civil rights protests, and I was so angry over the death of Martin Luther King Jr.,” recalls Saar, who was born in Los Angeles in 1926. So in the late ‘60s, the artist began making her assemblages in protest, using derogatory images sourced from postcards, knick-knacks, and advertisements. In 1972, she created The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, in which she replaced the character’s broom with a rifle and a backdrop that features vibrant patterns, collaged newspapers, and found materials. “Can you believe that that work is over 50 years old?” she asks. “It took that long to get her off that box of pancake mix; she was 'in service' far too long.” 

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“When I see it I’m like, that’s the truth,” curator and writer Essence Harden says of the work of Saar and Hammons. “ There's work that feels imbued with spirit,” she adds, “Black people are quite expansive and imaginative and are the foundation for much of how we experience American culture.”

The transformative power of art and the potential within materials from everyday life resonates across the darkest times to moments of unbridled joy. “Everything is overlapping, layered, chaotic, and that energy naturally seeps into my work,” says Abney who absorbs the world around her in her visual lexicon. “It’s about capturing a rhythm, a pulse, a way of being in the world that feels authentic to now.” 

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Assemblage and performance artist Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack echoes this sentiment. “There are so many different avenues of our culture and our soul is what frees us to take it there,” he says. “You can try to box us in or name us or stereotype us, but when we dig deep down inside our soul, there's this freeing quality that allows us to go deeper, to go outside these boxes and stereotypes.” 

Like art, the act of reclaiming troubled narratives exists within the Black culinary space. As I spend time researching my ancestors' past and revisioning dishes passed down to me, I am able to unlock a deeper understanding of the culture. “There is an unfortunate sense of history repeating itself, like we take two steps forward, one step back,” Saar says. 

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Through work that reflects and reclaims the past, we have the opportunity to repair what was once fragmented, forging a future where Blackness is celebrated and cultivated in its full complexity. In this ongoing process, Saar and her predecessors remind us that the fight for a more just and empowered future is not only necessary but deeply rooted in the transformative power of art.