Danielle Deadwyler: Object-Subject: Flaw is the Only Recourse

About

CUE Art Foundation is pleased to present Object-Subject: Flaw is the Only Recourse, a solo exhibition by Danielle Deadwyler, curated and mentored by Tiona Nekkia McClodden. The exhibition consists of three bodies of work: a short film, titled CHOR(E)S; the lenticularities, a series of 232 self portraits; and 3 lenticularities posters overlaid with text from the 1881 Atlanta Washerwoman Manifesto. Together, these bodies of work explore what bell hooks calls “that act of speech, of ‘talking back,’ that is no mere gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject — the liberated voice.”

Deadwyler summons the spirits and the labor of the Black women who orchestrated the Atlanta Washerwomen Strike in 1881 in 3 self portraits, or lenticularities, that are transformed into posters and overlaid with quotations pulled from their manifesto, such as “We will have full control.” Both a demand and a warning, Deadwyler calls out, or is recalled to, the eponymous strike of Black laundresses that took place less than two decades after the Civil War ended as they demanded better working conditions, pay, and autonomy over their labor along with visibility, respect, and recognition for the work that laundresses, and all Black women workers, contributed to Atlanta’s economy.

The success of this particular labor strike is both highlighted by and in tension with the film CHOR(E)S, in which the artist choreographs her own body throughout an otherwise empty house in a performative critique of the weight of domestic labor. Her face is shrouded in hair, giving the illusion that she is facing away from the camera even as her body faces toward us. The figure’s isolated and repetitive actions are performed throughout uninhabited rooms and set to a poetic chopped ‘n screwed audio mix. This domestic figure, who does not allow herself to be seen, calls into question the visibility of domestic labor in general as a task which still falls disproportionately to Black women, women of color, and femmes to execute over 100 years after the Atlanta Washerwomen Strike. Installed alongside the film is a suite of 232 self-portraits, titled lenticularities, made over the course of 3 years from 2017-2020. These portraits, made with iPhone images and photocopies that were then drawn on and otherwise altered, obscured, and embellished, explore serial self-making and the performance of the selves that reside within the artist. The chorus of selves play with the idea of flaw and difference through repetition and accumulation, and the shifts that inevitably result as glitches become reified.