mosDivine!

Julie Mehretu Grey Area Guggenheim New York

2010-06-15T11:19:00.000-07:00

Walk into the Guggenheim New York and enter a gallery where larger than life canvases tower against pristine walls in monumental wonder. Upon first glace, these works appear abstract, drawing closer, the precise lines resembling architectural blueprints emerge; detailed drawings over and under layers of movement. Through the support of Deutsche Bank’s 15th Guggenheim commission program, the marvel Julie Mehretu Grey Area encompasses six larger than life paintings.

Pictures of these large scaled images are not able to capture the layers, details and structural space, created by the intense lines and murky erasures. Ink and acrylic works on canvas, Grey Area, literal in the palette maintained among each image, as well as figurative confronts lived history and urban landscaping, possessing a political and sociological tent.

The black smudges resembles the abstract reminisces of birds features. Hung on massive walls, towering from what alludes to the sky in great depth, Julie’s lines travel off the page. The frenzy of smudges, elegant accents of light through erasure marks, allows the pieces to be filled with movement and vast dimensions in an infinite plane of landscape, but also monumental in the foundations of the structural landscaping.

Forty year old Mehretu is a New York based artist originally from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and raised in Michigan. Her father, an Economic Geographer and Professor had a large influence on Julie’s socio-political themes in her works. She earned her MFA with Honors from Rhode Island School of Design, and has held several solo exhibitions internationally.

Julie Mehretu Grey Area opened May 14th and is on view until October 6th, 2010. The eloquent Joan Young, curator, sat down with us to discuss Julie’s aesthetical inspiration, and influential background; check out what she had to say…

Art Pedagogy of Black Arts as a form of Social Justice Education

2009-11-12T14:55:00.000-08:00

Although art education is largely ignored in the core curriculum of many high schools, it is a more than useful means for giving young adults the historical foundation needed in order to inspire future leadership. Black art, in particular adequately addresses issues of social change and mobility, citizenship, identity as well as other critical themes within the African American community. Black visual artists and their works discuss critical issues of history, representation, aesthetics, and ideology in a medium that is being deemed invisible. Art history is an abundant tool for educational tool for teaching African American high school students about African-American art as well as the historical frameworks from which this art was produced. Specifically, the works of African American artists such as Charles White, Faith Ringgold, Kara Walker and Aaron Douglas in order to emphasize the importance of art education as a field that should be incorporated into the core curriculum of predominately African American high schools.
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Through the hidden curriculum of art, African American art education is a catalyst for educating African American students about historical occurrences, social movements, and philosophical ideologies of a given epoch and artist. Art education not only provides students with didactic material about their own history, but it also aims to give these young adults the historical foundation needed in order to produce potential leaders of the Black community who are historically and ideologically grounded.

Art history is a notable method at discussing history, cultural backgrounds, social change and mobility, citizenship, identity negotiations, as well as other relationships that are important to the development of young adults. Art history is both historical and conceptual.

Mainstream art venues consider art apolitical and objective, void of propaganda and opinions. Black art reflects African American history and culture, particularly the tradition of resistance and political struggle.

The term Black aesthetics, became a reoccurring term in the literature of Black critics during the 1960’s; although the concept was widely recognized during the 1920’s by figures in the Harlem Renaissance. All of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance wanted to accomplish an explanation for artistic expression that represented the African American experience in a positive light; however, some witness the intentional inclusion of socio-political meaning for racial mobility. Others saw freedom of expression and rejected nostalgic notions that advocate art be used as a tool of racial uplift and to fight social wrongs.

To date, many purists want to say art is relieved of politics, it is neutral and unbiased. In actuality, art is subjective and addresses culture. It is dialectical, going through a process of motion, change, and development. The dialectical nature of the Black experience, how society and history had its influences on the essence of a community, influenced artistic expression rooted in such experiences.

Black art is an attempt at defining ourselves. It is a tool of emotional uplift, a record of history, and the experiences of second-class citizenship, oppression, prejudice and discrimination.

Black visual arts and artists are often omitted and marginalized. While scholars discussed whether the function of Black art, the subject still remains: Black visual artists and their works discuss critical issues of documentation, depiction, and theory in a medium considered invisible. By excluding these visual arts, we reject the critical concepts and creative works that relate to representation and history.

An acclaimed African American artist who was successful at capturing an expressive beauty in Black people is Charles White. As a Social Realists, White chose to convey truth and representation. He draws large hands of Black people that have been the ultimately exploited class who built a nation. He is able to capture pain and suffering through the strokes and contrast, he emphasizes light that accentuates expressions, frown brows, gleams of hope and the wear of struggle. White’s work documents lives in the South before the Black migration.

These rich images can be used to inform young African Americans of a history that is not reflected in the failing school system. Black students are not being taught their history. The core curriculum often does not offer an expansive view that reflects multiculturalism. High school students are mature enough to understand the complexity and figurative representations in Black art, and not be traumatized by the content. High school students are young adults negotiating their position in society and by the age of fifteen, are fully acquainted with discrimination.

In recent decades, the discussion of the best way to educate our children has grown more popular. Teachers face challenges of creating environments that encourage creative and imaginative thinking. Art education provides a way for students to intellectually interpret and emotionally connect to difficult messages that are conveyed to the community. In this example, art education works as an agent for social change, working with human development, being and able to “mold” minds through curriculum.

The status of education in the United States resembles many communities. Schools across the nation are often segregated. The underprivileged Black students of such communities are rarely taught art and there is hardly any material in the core curriculum relating to African American culture outside of month of February.

If these students receive any art education on the secondary level, they would more likely be introduced to an example like Manet’s Olympia. In this painting, a Black woman is seen merely as a servant. This painting conveys polarizes notions of beauty and purity to young African Americans—white serenity, Black severity. The provocative nude realist painting conveys the serene beauty and captivating contours of the naked white flesh that softly lays on clean white sheets as Olympia’s eyes gaze back at viewers in an unconventional manner. In contrast, Black students could be analyzing Faith Ringgold’s quilt entitled Jo Baker’s Birthday. They could learn to critically decipher the importance of the quilt in the African American community, the representation of Josephine Baker and her legacy, and the allusion to Manet’s Olympia and reversal of a white maid.

Many Black students in my class are unfamiliar with acclaimed artist Aaron Douglas. Douglas successfully integrated Africanisms in his works. His work was successful at drawing a connection between the African American experience and African cultural traditions. An example of Douglas’ work that demonstrates this correlation is his large four panel murals entitled Aspects of Negro Life.

In order to understand Black art, one must consider its geographical, historical, intellectual and general cultural background. Always need to be looked at in a historical context. Occurrences such as the Black Exodus, the Red Summer, Jim Crow and disenfranchisement cause of key African American artistic movements. With the reality that the “American Dream” was not achievable because of their status as second-class citizens, African Americans began artistic forms of expression. Collectively, Black people untied their tongues, and used oppression as motivators for their work.

The works of pioneering artist Lois Mailou Jones paid homage to the indigenous originals of our cultural traditions, drawing heavily on the connection between African Americans and the continent. Not only are Jones’ works captivating for their social content, their use of color and simplicity of shapes and sophistication of lines give substantial information to viewers. Jones understood and appreciated Africanisms’, which signify Diaspora—attraction to the use of African masks and textile patterns. From the works of Jones’ students can recognize notions of historical relationships between blackness and African. It promotes Pan-Africanism, affirming a collective identity unifying all people of African descent globally based on a common experience and retained traditions.

African American contemporary artist Kara Walker uses her work to provoke thought in present day viewers. In her beautiful life-size paper cut-out silhouettes which contrast monochromatically between black shapes placed against white walls, every contour is intentional, meaningful, and is elegantly drawn. In form, and artistic skill, they are sophisticated and graceful. Walker’s work is an attempt to document historical occurrences, and resist the sin of omission that has ignored the sexual exploitation of Black people, particularly black women.

Throughout recorded history in the Americas, visual art often depicted stereotypical imagery of Black women. Walker’s work is a response to the stereotypical depictions of Black women in colonialism. Walker comments on the representations of race, gender, sexuality and identity previously discussed in systems of colonialism.

Although Walker’s work is often categorized as aggressive and grotesque, her works are also cleverly metaphorical. Walker’s work is not popular to many audiences and often receives a lot of criticism. He works are not meant for the pleasure of, or to flatter any particular audience. What makes her work even more valuable is its ability to provoke thoughts and dialogue, which can be concluded as productive and educational.

Although it is thought that Walker’s work is an extreme example for a tool of pedagogy, the provocateurs of the time are always marginalized. Contemporary examples of provocative works of art provide critical information that challenges nostalgic narratives that omit true representations of miscegenation and other difficult occurrences that young adults are very unfamiliar with.

As generations progress, the youth of the Black community appear to become more unaware of the social issues that many community members before them have faced. Desegregation of the Civil Rights Era and the need to valorize the African American experience during the Black Power Movement appear to be issues of the past, instead of necessities just one and two generations before. Black art is so rich, yet has been neglected by society.

Black artists look for inspiration to their works through the masses. The oppression and discrimination Black people have faced were used as a motivating force for their works. Elements such as the content, context, characters, and medium contribute to the development of young adults. This can provide racial pride where self-hatred has taken over and a sense of worth.

Art education can provide opportunities for social change. Critical issues of race, class, and gender have been discussed in Black art through the African American experience by those members of society who are pushed to isolated margins. Not only has Black art interrogated the complexities of identity in relation to society, it has become a platform for agency and resistance against oppressive powers.

All in all, the works of African American artists are sufficient at documenting history and the African American experience. It provides a cultural and intellectual perspective on political conditions. Although the works are loaded and highly charged, and difficult to grapple with, they can adequately address the complexities to the Black experience and offer historical truths, representation, and interest in aesthetics.

(Please contact for bibliography)

From Casta Paintings to the Combating Art of Postmodernity: dialogues between the traditional and the works of Kara Walker

2009-10-27T17:02:00.001-07:00

Throughout recorded history in the Americas, visual art has consistently depicted stereotypical imagery of Black women. For instance, commissioned by Spanish and Creole elites in eighteenth century Mexico, Casta Paintings were made to illustrate ideologies of racial hierarchy, a necessary condition to sustain imperial order. These paintings were specially made for the comfort of Spanish and Creole elites, to “enlighten” and amuse their audience with classifications that defined the socioeconomic class and race of the “exotic”. In the Casta paintings, scenes of violence often times included the presence of black women, either being the victims of, or those behaving violently. However, unlike the Casta paintings, many contemporary artists intentionally scrutinize race relations, similar to those represented in the Casta Paintings. African American artist Kara Walker resists the representations of race, gender, sexuality and identity previously discussed in systems of colonialism. Through the use of genteel art, using life sized scale paper cutout in monochromatic contrasts between black shapes against white walls, Walker’s work becomes a catalyst for agency at describing factual taboos in history uncovered as reality. Comparing and contrasting the representations of black woman’s race, gender, sexuality and identity in traditional Casta paintings, and the methods and content of Kara Walker’s work offers a controversial and provocative response as it speaks directly to the previous depictions of black women.

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Colonial perspectives of blackness have been thought of negatively by imperialist in Latin America, as well as throughout the entire New World. Negative attributes of blackness, are documented as originating from Muslim antecedents as early as the ninth century in Iberia. In latter years, Christians began to adopt Muslim concepts of infidelity.[1] Soon after, European Christians invented the categories of race based on signifiers of phenotypes, which they saw as culture.[2] In this early century, racial hierarchies were created where “blacks occupied the lowest level of the socio-cultural and biological order” (Sweet, 148).[3] In the New World, the taxonomy of race reinforced the hierarchy that the Spaniards and Creoles established.[4] Spaniards became the aristocrats of colonies such as Mexico and imposed their hierarchical ideology on the entire society.[5] The Spaniards and Creoles created a society that polarized blackness and whiteness. Blackness was a key signifier of persons of African descent and posed as a stain for enslaved Africans. As Ilona Katzew describes in her essay, Casta Paintings: Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico, the Spaniards and Creoles created distinctions of race to proclaim class divisions. In this hierarchy, there existed a dichotomy between blackness and whiteness. “Whiteness was associated with beauty and civility, while blackness equaled ugliness and severity.” [6] When classifying individuals, blackness posed as a weight, pulling down whoever held predominantly African ancestry, who were placed at the lowest level of dignity. As George Reid Andrews puts it in Afro-Latin America:1800-2000, blackness was “the most and obvious indicator of low social status.”[7] In this taxonomy, the more African ancestry an individual retained, the less redeeming the person was.

[When] Spaniards are mixed only with Indians, the blood can be purified. However, the mixture of Spanish or Indian with Black can never again be purified back to Spanish or Indian.[8]

While the Spaniards recognized Spanish and Indian nations, they decided Indians were able to become ‘New Christians’, whereas blacks, as German natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt is quoted in Katzew’s essay:

Blacks, on the other hand, were brought to the New World as salves and were in theory situated at the lowest echelons of society; they worked as domestic servants for the Spaniards and as laborers on the sugar plantation, mines, and estates. Blacks were considered a homogeneous group with no rights.[9]

At this time, the mixing of Spanish or Indian with Blacks was thought to lead to chaos and incivility that caused disorder and conflict.[10] Blackness was demonized as the epitome of evil and disdain.

Spaniards concerned over the loss of control over the colony of Mexico accounts for a large part of the emergence of the casta paintings. The appearance of the casta paintings is due largely to the insecurity and anxiety among the elite. Uneasiness over the loss of control over the colony due to riots and demonstrations led by blacks, mulattoes and indigenous peoples caused the emergence of the classifications and distinctions to reinforce racial differences in a society where phenotypical identification became difficult. The classifications were a way of ordering the colonial subjects, by placing restrictions on communities to be inhabited, as well as attire that could be worn by different societal groups. For example, in Carrera’s essay, she says “This system also proscribed the physical and social mobility of castas. Castas were not allowed to live in the Indian neighborhoods; certain official posts were denied to mestizoes; and sumptuary legislation denied specific types of clothing and jewelry to certain castas.”[11]

Despite these ideas of superiority/inferiority, miscegenation beginning as early as the sixteenth century, created a large population of racially mixed people classified/labeled as castas. The term “caste” in New Spain was used to classify different variations of mixed races. The creation of the casta paintings in the eighteenth century portrays the race mixing of three major nations that inhabited the colony: Spanish, Indian, and Black. These paintings portrayed scenes of a man and woman of different races, and their offspring, “accompanied by an inscription that identifies the racial mix depicted,” classifying their hierarchical order in relation to Spanish blood.[12] Although there is not much about the casta series known, it is certain that they were produced for a Spanish and Creole audience. “Early examples of casta painting in particular-those produced in the first quarter of the eighteenth century-might have been intended as reminders of the Spanish Crown that Mexico was still a rigidly structure society.”[13]

As strategies of self-representation, Katzew continues, casta paintings emphasized the overall stratification of society through the metaphor of race, highlighted the wealth and abundance of Mexico, and involved “the deliberate mediation of reality…through scenes selected for representation.”[14] The caste laws were not just set up to distinguish between races. Rather, the purpose of the classifications was to reinforce racial difference and social status. Social status was not solely based on economics, it was based on “blackness,” “who identified themselves or are considered by others to be ‘black’.”[15] In addition to race, it was also an indicator of socioeconomic class. The Spaniards and Creole used these distinctions between races to exert power over the colony and maintain imperial control. In addition, the Casta Paintings served as amusement for the Spanish Crown and to “enlighten” them on the exotic New World that portrayed as full of luxury and abundance.[16]

Casta paintings of the early eighteenth century promoted images of civility and utopianism that clouded racial tensions. However, the image of the Spanish got too engrossed among the Castas. Some Creoles opposed this because it presented the Spanish as socializing among those of a lower social status. There needed to be an emphasis on comparison between poverty and low social status, with the extravagant display of wealth the Spaniards and Creoles employed. Artist Miguel Cabrera was able to apply to these concerns. Paintings produced after the second half of the eighteenth century represented the ideals of the Spaniards and Creoles and topics of whiting and purification, and wealth and poverty.

When observing three panel Casta paintings in the collection of the Museo de America in Madrid, the stigma placed upon blackness is evident. The purification of casta blood is demonstrated in the three panels, “moving from mestizo to castizo, and finally to espanol…not by lightening of skin color, but by the shift from traditional, indigenous clothing to rich European-style clothing, and most significantly, by the move from a suburban setting to luxurious urban interiors.”[17]

Contrary to the notion that purification of Indian mixed blood is possible, miscegenation between the Spanish and Africans “is contrasted with boundaries established by behavior, clothing, and physical location in the previous panels.”[18] As mentioned previously in this paper, the mixing of Spanish or Indian with Black blood is unredeemable. In these instances, labor is shown as an economic marker of casta identity. For example, in the painting De Espanol, y Negra produce Mulato (From a Spanish man and a Black African woman, a mulatto boy is produced)[19], the couple and their child are depicted in a kitchen, and dishes and food are visible. This scene implies that the woman is associated with black servants. Her clothes in relation to those of the Spaniard mark her social status. Although she wears a European style dress, she also wears a red beaded necklace, not pearls, and wears a scarf on her head. Their offspring, the mulatto boy, is shown wearing ragged clothes. “As the family groups become more racially mixed, their social status diminishes”[20] Often times, the Spanish male is the center of the painting. Lavishly dressed and committed to tasks that conveyed his high status, the Spanish male is always shown as superior to both the Casta woman and their Casta offspring. With the triangular composition employed be artists, viewers are able to convey the status based on positions and gestures. Also, the casta paintings of the latter years during the eighteenth century include signifiers of social status, such as food products, indigenous textiles, fabric, and objects of trade.

This next example demonstrates how blackness was often demonized in New Spain. In those paintings containing black women, oftentimes these women are the producers or victims of violence. In one painting by Andres de Islas, De Espanol, y Negra; nace Mulata, 1774, a black woman is shown striking her husband with a cooking instrument, in a kitchen while their child attempts to restrain the mother. There are other scenes involving black women and domestic quarrels. In another scene, a mulatto woman is shown attacking her albarazado man.[21]

Contrary to his beliefs presented in Idea compendiosa del Reyno de Nueva Esparna (1774), when Katzew quotes O’Crouley as saying, “nor do any of the others envy the lot of Negro, who is the “most dispirted and despised.” By contrast, the works of African American contemporary artist Kara Walker redefines this master narrative and exposes the truth hidden behind the dogma. Walker confronts the question—were black women actually despised during the colonial era, or are their taboos not presented for the pleasure of elites? Unlike the casta paintings, the works of Walker are not meant for the pleasure of, or to flatter any particular audiences. On the contrary, Walker’s work is meant to provoke emotions and thoughts that discuss the issues hidden through the canvases of the casta paintings. Although there are many differences between Walker’s work and the casta paintings, there are just as many similarities.

First, the casta paintings were not a popular genre of works. They were not “seminal” portrayals during colonialism of the era.[22] Similar to the casta paintings, Walker’s work is not popular to a lot of audiences and oftentimes receive a lot of criticism.[23] Although the genteel technique that Walker employs was once popular and unique, redefining art in a manner of the elite, free of vulgarity, elegant and posh—“exceptionally fashionable in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century as part of the neoclassical revival”[24]—the content of her work appears to be alarming and overwhelming. Instead of romanticizing the colonial era as in the casta paintings, Walker scrutinizes race relations and its relation to colonialism.

Through the use of her life sized paper cut-out silhouettes which contrast monochromatically between black shapes placed against white walls, every contour is intentional and meaningful. Through fictional fantasy worlds, Walker creates slave plantations ripe with “stereotypical images from black memorabilia, folklore, historical novels, movies, cartoons, old advertisements, present-day steam Harlequin Romances, and the nineteenth-century slave biography.”[25] Walker does not look to portray prosperity and sumptuousness, rather, the themes of “Desire and miscegenation, sex and torture, violence and play intermingle thematically” permeate through her scenes. While the theme of miscegenation is displayed in the casta paintings by the races, skin tone of the offspring to demonstrate the complexities to social order and racial difference[26], Walker’s use of miscegenation serves the purpose of criticizing on the power injustices and role of sexual exploitation for economics and desire.[27] The props in Walker’s art are not like the fruit and cloth in the Casta paintings, they are well-though out signifiers and representations.

Carrera describes the paintings as:

“Casta images present the viewer with the impossible objection of the knowable and visible populacho body and its spaces as direct antithesis to the elite…they are imagined and unstable.” [28]

As the casta paintings attempt to capture a person, and portray a figure, true or false, the silhouettes of Walker successfully captures an individual’s likeness. Even though the truth and validity of the casta paintings are called into question because of the fabrications due to Spanish concerns, Walker’s same use of imagination and a fantasy world is where the two works begin to speak directly to one another. Where truth is lacking in the casta paintings, Walker decided to tell the factual stories through her scenes.

Despite the fact that there are many differences, there are practical similarities. Just as the casta paintings show white men as the controller of woman’s bodies, Walker acknowledges this point in her work. In her work, “the Negress”, the slave woman is used as the protagonist of events and stories, and viewers see how history played in relation to her. For the casta paintings, “the Spaniard wears a curly white wig.”[29] Walker, creates a curly hair figure that resembles founding father George Washington. And it is important to note, the casta paintings may not have been well accepted by everyone. As Magali Carrera states, they showed a “set of ideas and beliefs about elite and non-elite status as contextualized in the lived experiences of the people of late- colonial urban Mexico City.” Walker uses stereotypes, but there are mixed reactions. Her use of caricatures represents aspects of whiteness or blackness that conveys her messages, just as the casta paintings represent stereotypes of whiteness and blackness to convey the illusions of the time. The difference is, Walker uncovers and critiques those differences and rewrites the grand narrative.

[1] Sweet, James. “The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought”. a. A prevalent justification used to substantiate the inferiority and inherent servitude of blacks came from the story of Ham. In this biblical story, when Ham saw the nakedness of his father Noah, he was cursed by Noah saying “…your seed will be ugly and black.” Christians inherited Muslim beliefs, ascribing traits of sinfulness, ugliness, being primitive and predisposed for servitude. For Christians, Muslims were infidels for not being a believer of Christianity; and blacks were the infidels of Muslims. So according to Christians, blacks were the infidels of the infidel—doubly cursed. See page 149 for Sweet’s quote: “Not only were blacks not Christians, but they were the Muslim’s servants, the heathen’s heathen, doubly cursed by their status as nonbelievers and by their servile condition.” Christian vilification of blackness became a metaphor for slavery and it was legitimized through the curse of Ham—through religious infidelity. Thus, it was through this path that the colonializers of Latin-America inherited their racist ideologies of blackness.

b. In this instance, the word infidel refers to one who is without faith. Blacks were described as heathens and lacking civility among Muslims. Some believed, as a result of cultural practices, and not being Muslim, blacks were infidels. The term referred to non-Muslims.

[2] Sweet, James. “The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought”. “The dialectic between culture and phenotype operated in such a way that sub-Saharan Africans were unable to escape their inferior status. Skin color, as an insignia of race, remained an indelible marker of cultural, and thus racial, inferiority (145). Sweet quotes early Christian physician Ibn Botlan from Art of Making Purchase of Slaves as saying “the ‘engrained…nature’ of African dancing and beating and body odor were clear makers of inferiority.” Such assessments were later embraced by Christians involved in the Atlantic slave trade (151).

[3] In Magali M. Carrera’s essay Locating Race in Late Colonial Mexico, where she quotes Patricia Seed in The Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753, she notes “there are two distinct notions of race, which are biological (based on perceived physical characteristics, such as skin color or hair texture, believed to identify one as of a particular race) and social (based on social perceptions, associations, and definitions believed to delimit one as of a particular race).”

[4] Creole is used to describe Spaniards born in New Spain, people who were only of Spanish descent born and living in the New World.

[5] Katzew, Ilona. “Casta Paintings: Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico.”

[6] Sweet, James. “The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought”, 161

[7] Andrew, George Reid. Afro-Latin America: 1800-2000, 4

[8] Katzew, Ilona. “Casta Paintings: Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico”, 4

[9] Katzew, Ilona. “Casta Paintings: Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico”, 2

[10] Katzew, Ilona. “Casta Paintings: Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico”, 28. “The message was clear: certain mixtures-particularly those of Spaniards or Indians with Blacks- could only lead to the contradiction of debased sentiments, immoral proclivities, and ability to a decivilized state.”

[11] Carrera, Magali M.. “Locating Race in Late Colonial Mexico”, 38

[12] Katzew, Ilona. “Casta Paintings: Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico”, 1

[13] Katzew, Ilona. “Casta Paintings: Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico”, 9

[14] Carrera, Magali M.. Locating Race in Late Colonial Mexico, 38

[15] Andrew, George Reid. Afro-Latin America: 1800-2000, 5

[16] Katzew, Ilona. “Casta Paintings: Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico”, 17-18

[17] Carrera, Magali M.. “Locating Race in Late Colonial Mexico”, 43

[18] Carrera, Magali M.. “Locating Race in Late Colonial Mexico”, 43

[19] Carrera, Magali M.. Imagining Identity in New Spain, 58

[20] Katzew, Ilona. “Casta Paintings: Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico”, 1

[21] In these two scenes, black women are the producers of violence. Although the latter is a mulatto woman, the assumption is made, with the mixing of black with white or Indian, incivility and primitivism is the result. The mulatto woman is the produce of black and white parents.

[22] Carrera, Magali M.. Imagining Identity in New Spain.49

[23] Dixon, Annette. Kara Walker: Picture from Another Time. 38

[24] Dixon, Annette. Kara Walker: Picture from Another Time. 19

[25] Dixon, Annette. Kara Walker: Picture from Another Time. 12

[26] Carrera, Magali M.. Imagining Identity in New Spain, 28

[27] Dixon, Annette. Kara Walker: Picture from Another Time, 13

[28] Carrera, Magali M.. Imagining Identity in New Spain, 135

[29] Carrera, Magali M.. Imagining Identity in New Spain, 54