February 13 - March 12

Emma Amos:
Paintings and Prints, 1983 - 2003

Emma Amos, Africa and Picasso, 2000,
31”x 42”, Oil on Linen with African fabric

Friday, March 5, 7-9 pm
Art and Difference presentation by Emma Amos '58 and reception in conjunction with Antioch College's International Womens Day celebration.

Saturday, March 6, 2-4 pm
Artist talk by Emma Amos at the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio where the exhibition Emma Amos Draws on Paper will be on view. Call (937)-376-4944, ext. 134 for details.

About the Exhibition

In conjunction with Antioch College’s 150-year anniversary celebration, the Herndon Gallery will present an exhibition of works by New York painter and printmaker Emma Amos ('58). Amos, an Antioch graduate, is an internationally recognized artist whose work critically examines and intervenes in world history, art history, and the politics of representation.

The exhibition opens February 13th and will remain on view through March 12th. On March 5th (7-9 pm), Emma Amos will present a talk at the gallery entitled Art and Difference in conjunction with the College’s International Women’s Day celebration. She will be present for the announcement of the Barbara Slaner Winslow scholarship awarded each year to an outstanding Antioch student in Women’s Studies. Amos’ presentation will be followed by an opening reception. The Herndon Gallery is located in South Hall on the Antioch College campus, 795 Livermore Street in Yellow Springs. Admission is free.

From her early work as a member of the black artist collective Spiral, to recent prints and canvases that deconstruct popular icons (from Picasso to ‘Lil Kim), Emma Amos challenges audiences to consider how ideas about race, sex and identity are constructed and disseminated through images. Her works expose the ways in which images of blackness and non-western cultural forms have been historically appropriated by white artists. At the same time, they challenge popular expectations and institutional barriers that serve to censor contemporary artists of color, particularly black women artists.

As Amos writes, “I became concerned with the issue of freedom of expression in figurative imagery, particularly the symbolic use of dark bodies. Researching the impact of race, I found that white male artists are free to incorporate any image. While they may have worried about their inclusion of “colored” imagery for one reason or another, they found that their work which included nonwhite figures was seen as more exciting, more provocative, more sexually charged and more noteworthy (Think of Orientalism, Gaugin’s Tahitian Women, Picasso’s “African” painting and sculpture… Gilbert & George’s smiling black youth). Much of this work continues to be seen as groundbreaking in its expression of the will to cross boundaries. When African-American artists cross boundaries, we are often stopped at the border.”

Amos transgresses these boundaries in works that insist upon her subjectivity and freedom of expression as an artist. She incorporates a wide range of materials in her work, from photographs and embroidery, to swatches of her own weaving and borders made of colorful kente cloth and batik fabric. These elements punctuate Amos’s richly painted canvases and reflect her interest in combining high art and craft-based practices. Most recently, she has developed a technique for silk-screening images onto large velvet panels.

Emma Amos, Topsy Curly, 2001
65 1/4" x 34 1/4", Silkscreen on velvet with African fabric.

Emma Amos, Curly Topsy, 2001
65 1/4" x 34 1/4", Silkscreen on velvet with African fabric.

The selection of work by Emma Amos on view at the Herndon spans a 20-year period. Included are early works like Star and Leopard, a large-scale canvas with hand-woven elements that is part of a 1983 series exploring the representation of black athletes; paintings from the “Falling” series that depict figures in states of suspension and upheaval; and works that interrogate the canon of art history (Malcolm, Morley Matisse and Me (1993), Tribal Headdresses of the Twentieth Century (2000)). Also included are two works that relate specifically to the Miami Valley area: Indian Mound and Land of the Free (both 1992). The latter incorporates an image of Elmer and Christine Lawson who opened their Yellow Springs home to African-American visitors in the 1950s and 60s, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. Amos most recent work includes Topsy Curley and Curley Topsy, both silk-screens on velvet that feature images of the reversible, half-black, half-white “Topsy Turvy” dolls that originated in the south in the 1800s.

After graduating from Antioch College, Emma Amos studied at the Central School of Art in London, New York University and Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop. She is currently a Professor at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Amos’s work has been exhibited internationally and is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the New Jersey and Minnesota state museums, and the Dade County and Newark museums

Gallery Hours:

Tuesday - Friday 1 - 5 pm
Saturday 11-5 pm
and by appointment: (937)-769-1149