Betye Saar’s Sculpture “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” (1972)

Excerpts from the Paper

Betye Saar's Sculpture "The Liberation of Aunt Jemima" (1972)
Betye
Saar’s The Liberation of Aunt Jemima is a mixed-media sculpture that features a message about both African Americans’ and women’s social and political liberation in American society (Figure 1). Created in 1972, Saar’s sculpture features at its center a sculpture of the African American “mammy” figure called Aunt Jemima by whites since at least the time of slavery in the United States. The “mammy” slave, and later servant, was always a Black woman who served in a white family’s household as a cook, housecleaner, and child caregiver. The main sculpture here shows Aunt Jemima dressed in her typical outfit, of a large and long red floral dress, with a knotted kerchief on her...

.....nal Visionary Artist” by the National Visionary Leadership Project, created in 2001 and meant to “record, preserve, and distribute through various media, the wisdom of extraordinary African American elders […] who have shaped American history” in order to inspire new generations of young people (Visionary Project).
Images
Figure 1.
Betye
Saar, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972, Mixed-media sculpture.
Works Cited
Brooklyn Museum of Art. “
Betye
Saar: The Liberation of Aunt Jemima.” Retrieved 17 May 2011, <https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/gallery/BetyeSaar.php?i=324>
National Visionary Leadership Project. “
Betye
Saar: National Visionary.” Retrieved 17 May 2011, <http://www.visionaryproject.org/saarbetye/>