“Ain’t Yo Mama on the Pancake Box?” asks the title of a red-and-black satin wall hanging lined with gold-and-black print fabric from Senegal. Two tar-black “darkie” caricatures grin out from the middle of the piece, above a photo transfer of a 1920s Sunlight Soap ad with a black baby hovering over the phrase “so clean and white.”
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“You try not to accept stereotypes, not to believe them, and that takes work,” says artist Venus Blue. “When I was growing up, that was the joke–“Ain’t that yo mama on the pancake box?”‘ Though making jokes may be one way of coping with negative images, Blue’s current exhibit, “Fact, Fallacy, and Illusion: Historical African-American Imagery,” takes a more direct approach by confronting the images. The exhibit includes various representations of African-American culture along with chilling depictions of slavery. “To understand how certain stereotypes developed, you have to go back in history where they started,” she says. “It helps to make the connections about why people expect certain people to act a certain way.”
“Being in Australia has helped me transcend worlds. I have a stronger sense of the way oppressed people are able to survive despite the odds. From one generation to another, aborigines have been affected by negative images the same way we have.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jim Alexander Newberry.
