Alison Saar’s haunting sculptures collapse history and present, personal and universal, epheme
Alison Saar’s haunting sculptures collapse history and present, personal and universal, ephemeral and eternal. Her practice is a singular mix of rough-hewn hand sculpting and a sharp eye for found objects loaded with history. On the one side of Weight sits a stoic young girl on a tree swing, innocent and vulnerable in her nakedness and yet fully self-possessed. On the other side balances a chain-bound cluster of domestic and agrarian implements—a scythe, skillets, irons—all bearing the rust of real use. The fulcrum that hinges between them is an old cotton scale. In Saar’s typical mode, the soulfulness of the sculpture becomes a vehicle for its biting manifestation of the cruel history of slave labor in the present. Unlike her mother Betye’s work, which fluctuates between poles of poetic mysticism and bold confrontation, Alison’s sculptures occupy a middle ground in which self-possessed women acknowledge and carry the weighty histories embedded in objects, but still find a way to stride forward toward the future, scarred yet empowered. Much like the delicate balance effected in Weight, Saar finds an elegant harmony between Betye’s apparent influence and a personal vision of the world literally molded with her own two hands.Alison Saar, Weight, 2012 -- source link
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