#dialectics of isolation

[brooklynmuseum]

“I had faced de facto censorship issues throughout my life as part of the system of apartheid in the United States. In the tape I was bristling at the women’s movement as well as at the artworld and some of the usual offensive encounters that were heaped on top of the racism of my profession.”

So wrote Howardena Pindell in 1992 about Free, White and 21. This intensely personal and political film, whose title comes from a rebellious catchphrase often heard in Hollywood movies of the 1930s and ’40s, was a stark departure from the abstract works on paper for which she was primarily known.

The film was first shown in Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States, curated by Ana Mendieta at A.I.R. Gallery in 1980. Confronting the largely white viewing audience typical of A.I.R.’s SoHo neighborhood, Free, White and 21 challenges unrecognized biases and unexamined privileges. Pindell’s personal account of the prejudice she experienced exposed white liberals’ complicity in systemic racism and sparked controversy within the gallery and beyond. Pindell’s motivation, however, was not to put viewers on the defensive but to record, on her own terms, her lived experience as a woman of color.

Howardena Pindell (American, born 1930). Top: Installation view ofFree, White and 21, 1980. In Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibitionof Third World Women Artists of the United States, A.I.R. Gallery(September 2–20, 1980). 12 min.15 sec. Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York. Bottom: Still from Free, White and 21, 1980. Video, 12 min.15 sec. Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York. © Howardena Pindell

[brooklynmuseum]

In 1980, artist Ana Mendieta curated Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States at New York's A.I.R. Gallery. Featuring eight women artists of the Third World—Judith Baca, Beverly Buchanan, Janet Henry, Senga Nengudi, Lydia Okumura, Howardena Pindell, Selena Whitefeather, and Zarina—the exhibition was conceived as a conversation between the artists and the primarily white, middle-class female members of the gallery. As a space for truth-seeking through critical dialogue, the show stressed the need to confront the dominant culture with the existence and value of nonwhite experience, in and out of the art world. 

A.I.R. Gallery, the first all-women artists’ cooperative gallery in the United States, was founded in 1972 by second-wave feminist artists who, like other groups including “Where We At” Black Women Artists, believed that female-only spaces were necessary to build a culture of support. While the core membership of A.I.R. lacked racial and economic diversity, limiting their ability to be truly representative, the Cuban American Mendieta became an active member in 1979. She withdrew in 1982, however, concluding that the mainstream Feminist Movement had again “failed to remember” its nonwhite counterparts and their struggle with issues of race, gender, and class.

Installation view of Ana Mendieta (American, born Cuba, 1948–1985) Untitled (Facial Cosmetic Variations), 1972. Chromogenic prints. Courtesy of the Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC and Galerie Lelong, New York.

[brooklynmuseum]

After receiving a master’s degree in public health from Columbia University in 1969, Beverly Buchanan traded her ambition to become a doctor for a working career as an artist, living in New York until 1977. Buchanan explored the cultural and social history of sites and ruins, coupling a poignant sense of the transience of historical memory with an active engagement with Post-Minimalism and Land art.

Wall Column, which was included in Ana Mendieta’s Dialectics of Isolation exhibition, was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lowery Stokes Sims, who was a curator at the museum in the 1980s, brought the work into the collection. As Sims recalls: I was impressed by the relationship of her conceptual approach to the seductions of the landscape and the engagement of materials that resonated with historical art making by African Americans in the South.

Beverly Buchanan (American, 1940–2015). Untitled (Frustula Series), circa 1978. Cast concrete, a: 20 x 10 x 16 in. (50.8 x 25.4 x 40.6 cm); b: 12 x 15 1/2 x 15 in. (30.5 x 39.4 x 38.1 cm); c: 22 1/2 x 5 1/2 x 14 1/4 in. (57.2 x 14 x 36.2 cm). Private collection. © Estate of Beverly Buchanan, courtesy of Jane Bridges