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ABOUT THE ARTIST
The beauty of a renaissance woman is the foundational essence of artists like Lisa Whittington. With eyes that consume the world with an unquenchable thirst it is no surprise that Whittington’s work continually pays homage to artists, musicians, and writers from many walks of life. It is through the bright expressive works of Frida Kahlo, Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Jacob Lawrence, Pablo Picasso, Romare Bearden and Vincent Van Gogh that Lisa Whittington’s strongest influences find residence. However, It was first Van Gogh’s Starry Night that really captured her young heart and ignited within her the need to paint. His work swallowed her and it was beneath those rhythmic moving skies and twinkling stars of Van Gogh's world that a young black artist was encouraged to step foot into and create worlds upon a canvas. In a TEDTalk she said "nobody had ever given [the wind] color until Vincent Van Gogh did that for me." There is no question that when looking at both their works you see them command color in a way that turns pain, struggle and hardship into brilliant incandescent beauty and an expression of the vitality of life.
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The breadth of Lisa Whittington’s work is deeply calculated and heavily coded. She seeks to present the value in documenting life, culture, history, and experience yet the depth of her work expands well beyond the surface intentions of “documentation” and truly exists in conversation with these ideas. Lisa Whittington’s work has been at the forefront of a dialogue involving appropriation of Black suffering into profit and fun by white artists as well as in conversation with the posturing nature of the artworld in regard to the black perspective.
As a black female artist in America, her voice in context with the historical canon is vital to disrupting monocultural understandings of history while simultaneously altering our current record-keeping habits with the inclusion of multiple voices. Artists like Lisa Whittington are not only the purveyors of culture, they are the new keepers of history.
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After Saturday Night Comes Sunday (2019)
New Keeper of History
Tackling New Culture with the onset of the Black Lives Matter Movement“It’s 2018. While Black men try to escape injustice and blood shed by wearing suits, very little has changed. Everybody can see what’s going on and what’s happening to Black people. In the new millennium, very little has changed except everybody has access to a camera and can record the injustice. We no longer have to wait for a famous photographer to document our stories. The Black community continues to witness the struggle for justice particularly in the cases of unarmed Black men. Disturbingly, Black children are forced to helplessly observe the abuse from white police officers.” -Whittington
“I was shocked in 2014 to watch a video of Michael Brown laying dead in the street, uncovered for over 4 hours while children watched his blood spill on the ground and white police officers talked nonchalantly and uncaring that children were present-- or even that Michael Brown was a human being. It's usually the same old song. Black mothers will cry. The media will paint a picture of a Black villain. White cops will cry defense. And nobody will be punished for the death of a Black man.” - Whittington
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DECODING WHITTINGTON'S WORK
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Under A Soprano Sky (2018)
Full of connecting narratives, symbolism, and memories about place, “Under a Soprano Sky” is a documentary artwork that creatively details the history, trials, and the resilience of generations of African American people as they are originally uprooted from one place and brought to another . This artwork is one to study and think about each detail and features the very reflective “Harlem Baby” --a central figure found in numerous pieces of Lisa Whittington’s work as she uses the picture to help her narrate the histories of African Americans through art.
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Region in My Mind (2020)
Communication and Culture Care
“My work is often ignored even in its truths. However, when it is, it is acknowledged and considered it is highlighted and cherished."
The history of the early African-American is found in the story of thousands of Africans who were captured, shipped like cargo to the New World and sold into slavery. Lisa Whittington has a number of works that respond to this tragedy such as “Another Country” and “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon”. But no story is so simple. Some of her works explore modes of interpersonal interaction in the 2D. They offer interactive conceptual spaces where the viewer proposes a question to the artwork pertaining to the struggles of Black people in America and the conversation and buzzing begins as each Black icon depicted has an answer in his/her own personality.She explores the importance of remembrance and documentation, cultural celebration and beauty of life. Across the board Lisa Whittington’s body of work is captivating, thought provoking and visually stunning.
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