Audio by Shanice Bailey
Maker: Whitfield Lovell (1959 -)
Culture: American
Title: Temptation
Date Made: 2000
Type: Sculpture
Materials:Charcoal on wood, four frames with glass, chair, and metal hook
Measurements: 101 x 70 x 36 in.
Transcript:
This is one of my favorite pieces in the collection. I’m drawn to Temptation because of the artist’s process. He makes these beautiful charcoal drawings of black people, and it seems like this woman could be anyone, right? All of his subjects are real people – Lovell takes vernacular portraits, regular pictures like the ones you’d have in your home, and recreates them. He made this piece after an exhibit he did in 1999 called Whispers from the Walls. It was a multimedia installation where there were these life-size drawings, just like this one, drawn on the walls of a one-room shack he made from salvaged wood. You’d walk over gallery floors covered with soil and old clothing to enter the space, and it was filled with antique objects and audio of people whispering. Lovell was inspired to make things like this after attending an artist’s retreat at an Italian villa built by a man who made his fortune trading enslaved African people. When talking about the project, he said:
“Somehow the experience of being in the villa and knowing its history was so
haunting that I couldn’t work the way I was accustomed to working … I
wanted to leave some dignified images of black people in that space.”
This piece reminds me of the things we leave behind, evidence that we were here. This piece reminds me of my family. My parents immigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica in the 80s. My mom documented everything when I was growing up: my twin brother and I have these two huge baby books that she decorated herself, covered with baby Looney Toons fabric and ruffled trim. We have boxes of those CVS photo envelopes. I think my mom kept so many photos because they came here with so little. Neither of my parents have photos from their childhood. My mom has this one little sepia photo of herself as a toddler; it’s creased and faded and a little bigger than my thumb. That’s it. They didn’t have many pictures to begin with because they were hard to come by, and the ones they did have just didn’t make it here with them. Whitfield Lovell’s work makes me think about what could’ve happened to those photos, what might happen to my own, and helps me imagine new lives for them.