Meet the Artists
This pathway features artists whose gender, color, race, background, or identity has been historically marginalized in museums. Meeting the artists provides a chance to engage more deeply with their work and, when possible, to hear directly from the artists speaking in their own words.
The pathway starts on the third floor and continues downward, but can be explored in any order. Choose any one or, for a longer experience, explore them all. Click on More details to find gallery directions and activities.
Meet Mickalene Thomas
In the mixed media print Sleep: Deux Femmes Noires two black female bodies recline, entwined in an intimate embrace within a colorful collaged landscape. In a nod to the art historical tradition of painting objectified female nudes, Thomas engages with and subverts this history by infusing her work with Black female sexuality and power.
Artist video (3 min.): Thomas discusses her unusual choice of material and how important it is that young Black people are able to see themselves represented in museums. As you listen to the artist, how does this experience with the artist change how you see and experience the artwork on view?
Artist(s):
Mickalene Thomas (American, b. 1971)
Title:
Sleep: Deux Femmes Noires, edition 7/25
Date:
2013
Medium(s):
mixed media collage, wooblock, screenprint and digital print
Dimensions:
38 1/2 x 80 1/2 in.
Credit Line:
Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer
Location:
Featured Exhibition Gallery, Henry Radford Hope Wing, 1st floor
Meet Wangechi Mutu
Pull up a gallery stool. In this video, Wangechi Mutu offers a beautiful sense of who she is as a being. From her studio in Nairobi, she shares how her life experiences impact her work—including her love of nature and her fascination with women. How does your understanding of her work expand as you get to know her?
Artist(s):
Wangechi Mutu (Kenyan, b. 1972)
Title:
Second Born (Wangechi Mutu)
Date:
2013
Medium(s):
24 Kt gold, collagraph, relief, digital printing, collage, and hand coloring
Dimensions:
36 1/8 × 43 in. (91.8 × 109.2 cm)
Accession Number:
2022.1
Credit Line:
Gift of Dr. Jane Fortune, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Location:
Moravec Gallery of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, third floor
Meet El Anatsui
In this 4 min. video filmed at his Nigeria studio, El Anatsui describes and shows his process of collaborating with his studio team to make artworks such as this untitled piece.
Artist(s):
El Anatsui (Ghanaian, born 1944)
Title:
Untitled
Date:
2009
Medium(s):
Aluminum bottle caps and copper wire
Dimensions:
(when flat): 77 × 88 × 1/8 in. (195.6 × 223.5 × 0.3 cm)
Accession Number:
2019.1
Credit Line:
Gift of Dr. Jane Fortune, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Location:
Arts of Africa, third floor
El Anatsui describes the studio as a place for self-reflection and thinking. Where do you like to go for self-reflection and thinking? He describes a process of allowing time to play around. When, where, or how do you let yourself play around to let new ideas emerge?
Identity and Art | Jillian Marie Browning
Look closely at the enlarged shapes made from human hair from the artist, their sister, and their mom. In Matriarchal Line, Jillian Marie Browning explores hair, texture, and identity and celebrates the experience of getting comfortable with natural hair. In this video (12 min.), Browning discusses contemporary Black experiences and themes of identity and shares how cyanotypes are made.
Artist(s):
Jillian Marie Browning (American, b. 1989)
Title:
Matriarchal Line
Date:
2018
Medium(s):
29 cyanotypes on cotton fabric in wooden embroidery hoops
Dimensions:
Various sizes
Credit Line:
Courtesy of the artist, Jilian Marie Browning
Location:
Featured Exhibitions Gallery, first floor
Meet Dakota Mace
In this artwork Dakota Mace uses an eight-pointed star, a symbol from her Diné(Navajo) heritage, and has hand sewn a series of tiny glass beads through the surface of the photographic paper—to simulate Diné weaving techniques. Her work draws from her heritage, exploring the themes of family lineage, community, and identity. In choosing glass beads, she references the European colonial introduction of glass to native cultures. Mace describes this as a kind of reclamation of cultural appropriation from Western culture. The tactile beads provide texture, but also a method through which to complicate ideas surrounding cultural exchange, adoption, and appropriation.
In this 4 min. video, Dakota Mace talks about prior artwork, identity, and cultural appropriation vs. appreciation.
Artist(s):
Dakota Mace (Diné, b. 1991)
Title:
Náhookǫs Bikǫʼ I
Date:
2022
Culture(s):
Diné
Medium(s):
Chemigram, glass beads, and abalone shell
Dimensions:
11 x 14 in. each (print)
Credit Line:
Courtesy of the artist and Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York
Location:
Featured Exhibition Gallery, first floor
Meet MacArthur Binion
Look closely. Collaged reproductions of personal documents–the artist's phone address book, birth certificate, and his birth house in Macon, Mississippi, are used in an underlayer he refers to as the underconscious. Every friend, every experience is carried forward in the artwork.
In this 3 min. video MacArthur Binion shares how his life experiences play into his process and artwork.
Artist(s):
MacArthur Binion
Title:
DNA Sepia V
Date:
2016
Medium(s):
oil paint stick, sepia ink, and paper on panel
Dimensions:
96 x 72 in
Credit Line:
Courtesy of Art Bridges
Location:
Eskenazi Gallery, European and American Art, Modern and Contemporary, first floor
How might you create an artwork that references your own life experiences? What documents do you own or have access to that might serve as inspiration for an underconscious layer of your artwork? What might you add to this layer? To create your own artwork, make copies of any important documents and use the copies as collage material, along with any other art supplies on hand that you wish to use.
