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Color Odyssey
GMOA PRESENTS AN EMMA AMOS RETROSPECTIVE
By Jessica Smith arts@flagpole.com
Following the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement,
arts organizations across the country—many of which were
already operating in overdrive to support artists impacted
by the pandemic—were asked to reexamine their commit
ment to practices that promote inclusion, diversity, equity
and access in the arts. As we look forward to this ongoing
cultural shift, it’s important to look back and recognize
Black leaders who have been fighting for racial equity in
the arts all along. One such activist is Emma Amos, a dis
tinguished artist and educator whose work explores the
intersection of race, class, gender, age and privilege in the
art world and in society as a whole.
Opening Jan. 30 at the Georgia Museum of Art, “Emma
Amos: Color Odyssey” is a retrospective solo exhibition of
approximately 60 works made over the course of nearly
as many years. Dating between 1958-2015, the collection
reflects the growth of an artist, not only as she developed
talents across a variety of media, but also as she developed
her voice for advocacy.
Born in 1937 in a segregated Atlanta, Amos took a
strong interest in visual arts as a young child and went on
to receive a BFA from Antioch College in Ohio and an MA
from New York University. It was there that Hale Woodruff,
an NYU professor and mentor, invited her—as the first
and only woman—to join Spiral, a short-lived but storied
collective of prominent Black artists that formed in 1963
to examine their participation in the civil rights movement
and the art world at large.
Recognizing the importance of intersectionality, Amos
was equally dedicated to actively fighting sexism, misogyny
and gender discrimination and became involved in multiple
underground feminist collectives. As an editor and contrib
utor with the Heresies collective during the early ‘80s, she
helped facilitate discussions on race within the feminist art
movement through the group’s journal, Heresies: A Feminist
Publication on Art and Politics. Following her death at the age
of 83 in May 2020, it was revealed that she was also a mem
ber of the Guerrilla Girls, a clandestine group of feminist
activist artists established in 1985. Concealing their iden
tities by wearing gorilla masks in public and adopting the
pseudonyms of dead female artists, the collective continues
to produce posters, writings and artworks that use humor
to confront discrimination in the art world.
Amos served as a professor of visual arts at the Mason
Gross School of Art at Rutgers
University for 28 years, con
tinuing to create her own art
work while instructing the next
generation. Bouncing between
painting, printmaking and weav
ing, her body of work is unified
through an expressive use of
color. Influenced by Abstract
Expressionism, pop art and color
field painting, her earliest work
focuses on portraying women of
color, figures largely underrepre
sented on gallery walls. As time
went on, her style became more
detailed and began approaching
more complex themes.
Her large-scale mixed-media
works, often framed by African
fabrics and revealing semi-au
tobiographical content, present
visual tapestries that challenge
the norms of Western art tra
dition. Appearing on the cover
of Flagpole this week, “Equals”
depicts Amos floating in free-
fall in front of an American flag.
The portrait is from her “Falling
Series” from the 1990s, which
was initially developed in reaction
to homelessness, the AIDS epi
demic, racism, poverty and other
social ills contributing to a per
ceived fall of Western civilization.
Over time, the notion of “falling”
evolved to represent cultural
change, uncertainty and libera
tion through movement. Another
self-portrait, “Tightrope,” alludes “Tightrope” by Emma Amos
to the near-impossible task of
balancing roles as an artist, wife, mother and Black woman.
Wearing a Wonder Woman costume beneath a heavy black
coat, she walks above a sea of onlooking eyes.
“I hope that the subjects of my paintings dislodge, ques
tion and tweak prejudices, rules, and notions relating to art
and who makes it, poses for it, shows it, and buys it,” said
Amos through her artist statement on her website. “The
work reflects my investigations into the otherness often
seen by white male artists, along with the notion of desire,
the dark body versus the white body, racism, and my wish
to provoke more thoughtful ways of thinking and seeing... I
am interested in who gets acclaim for showing what, and in
what being called a ‘master’ often means. I also want people
to learn to feel my distaste for the notion that there is ‘art’
and ‘black art.’ Yes, race, sex, class, and power privileges
exist in the world of art.”
“Emma Amos: Color Odyssey” is accompanied by a full-
color hardback exhibition catalogue that features essays
by curators, scholars and artists, as well as supplementary
images and photographs. The exhibition will be on dis
play at the Georgia Museum of Art from Jan. 30-Apr. 25,
before traveling to spend the remainder of the year at the
Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, NY and
the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Shawnya Harris, Larry D.
and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and
African Diasporic Art at the Georgia Museum, will host a
Zoom discussion on Feb. 4 at 4 p.m. For details on that and
additional events, visit georgiamuseum.org. ©
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