DMV Color
DMV Color features an eclectic assortment of contemporary books, graphic novels, photobooks, and zines by women of color with ties to the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia.
Jihae Kwon, A Different Kind of Carousel, 2014; Artist’s book; Courtesy of Betty Boyd Dettre Library & Research Center, National Museum of Women in the Arts
Overview
The District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, known locally as the DMV, is a fertile center of art-making for women of color of diverse heritages. Washington, DC, and its surroundings have long been home to a rich community of artists of color, ranging from those born and raised here to others who built connections to the region as short-term residents.
DMV Color features an eclectic assortment of contemporary works by 20 women of African American, Asian American, and Latina heritage. The artists’ books, graphic novels, photobooks, and zines depict intimacies of family life, legacies of enslavement, effects of rampant development, dislocation and newfound freedoms tied to immigration, and other topics.
This online exhibition was created as a companion to DMV Color, on view at the Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center, NMWA, from November 4, 2019, to March 4, 2020, and includes new audio clips of seven artists describing their featured books, inspirations, and overall artistic practice.
Global Heritages
The District of Columbia and its extended surroundings, from Baltimore, Maryland, to Richmond, Virginia, have welcomed artists of African, Asian, Native, and Latinx heritage. This history stretches from the 1700s and earlier, boosted by the influx of formerly enslaved African Americans who flocked here during the Civil War and Reconstruction. More recently, immigrants from East, West, Central, and Southern Africa; Central and South America; Central Asia; the Middle East; Southeast Asia; and other regions have settled in the DMV as they flee armed conflicts, repressive governments, and economic crises. Some featured artists lived in the region for only a short time, but experienced a lasting impact on their creative endeavors. Women of these diverse heritages and DMV experiences, often united by a desire to be freed of restrictive social norms, have learned from and inspired one other in their creative endeavors.
Common Threads
Historically, the DMV has been home to some of the world’s most respected African American artists, many of them, such as Elizabeth Catlett, linked to Howard University. These artists especially began rising to prominence in the early and mid-twentieth century. Although no topic, from environmental crisis to romantic love, is out of bounds for the artists in DMV Color, many share a common theme in their work: the embrace of cultural identity. Here these identities are conveyed in varied mediums, but signifiers such as food, the admonitions of grandmothers, textiles, and childhood memories can be found across the boundaries of culture and form.
Suzanne Coley
All I Have
In this work, Suzanne Coley imagines and gives voice to a woman’s painful mourning of a son drowned while crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa in hopes of a better life in Europe. The artist responded to the loss of nearly 16,000 migrants’ lives in the Mediterranean in the last five years. All I Have is one of twelve books that Coley constructed from textiles given to her by the Warren M. Robbins Library, National Museum of African Art.
Renée Stout
Seven Windows
In Seven Windows, Renée Stout offers a glimpse into the world of her alter ego, Madam Ching, a mysterious fortune-teller and root worker, an herbalist associated with mysticism and folk magic. Arranged in the form of a journal, this artist’s book features individual pages with texts describing Madam Ching’s daily activities, brewing perfumes and love potions, buying and selling exotic herbs, and reading letters from friends and lovers.
Malaka Gharib
I Was Their American Dream
Malaka Gharib’s graphic memoir is a joyous tribute to her immigrant family. The daughter of a Catholic Filipino mother and a Muslim Egyptian father, Gharib navigates her coming of age between her Filipino and Egyptian heritage while adapting to white American culture. Her childhood memories and adolescence are vividly expressed through her red, white, and blue color palette and playful drawing style.
Jihae Kwon
To the New Land
Inspired by the cosmologies revealed by Mexico’s archaeological wonders, Jihae Kwon’s To the New Land depicts places of worship, movements of the sun and stars, and imagery of farming and animals to tell the story of a journey taken by indigenous people to the Americas.
A Different Kind of Carousel
A twist on the idea of a carousel as a joyous and carefree space (and on the book arts term for this form), Jihae Kwon’s work depicts human-eating plants and animals, subverting expectations in hand-painted gouache.
Jamila Zahra Felton
The Deep End: Or, Some of Us Learned How to Swim
As a poet and librarian, Jamila Zahra Felton gravitated to the book arts as a form of creative expression that melds her various interests. Her works explore themes of memory, love, identity, and history.
Excerpt from The Deep End: Or, Some of Us Learned How to Swim:
we love
and
we are
afraid
and
we are
angry
and
we should
all
be more
transparent
María Veroníca San Martín
In Their Memory
Thousands of Chileans flocked to the DMV to escape the 1973 to 90 military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. In Their Memory, based on María Veroníca San Martín’s archival research, documents the disappearance and torture of Chilean citizens under Pinochet. The work invites viewers to grapple with the erasure of the tumultuous era’s human rights injustices and violent political history.
Loïs Mailou Jones
Negro Folk Tales for Pupils in the Primary Grade (Book 1)
A member of the Howard University art department for forty-seven years, Loïs Mailou Jones created wide-ranging artwork that reflects influences from her extensive international travel. This 1938 children’s reader combines illustrations by Jones with text by Helen Adele Johnson, a prominent African American educator who worked in the South during the first part of the twentieth century.
Julie Sheah
Dream Book I
In this meditation on man-made environmental degradation, Julie Sheah visualizes trees taking their revenge on humans.
Clarissa Sligh
Reading Dick and Jane with Me
At age fifteen, Sligh was the lead plaintiff in the school desegregation case Clarissa Thompson et. al v. County School Board of Arlington County, filed in 1956, that ultimately granted her the right to enroll at formerly segregated Washington-Lee (now Washington-Liberty) High School in the northern Virginia suburb.
Wrongly Bodied Two
Wrongly Bodied Two relates the stories of Jake, a present-day white man who transitions from female to male, and Ellen Craft, a nineteenth-century black woman, who escapes slavery by passing as a white man. In photographing Jake, Clarissa Sligh explores society’s response to the act of changing one’s identity and re-examines her own fears of crossing the boundaries of gender, race, and class.
Magdalena Cordero
Long Chilean Gaia
Magdalena Cordero is inspired by the landscapes and writers of her native Chile, particularly the work of Nobel Prize-winning poet Gabriela Mistral. Based on Mistral’s posthumous publication “Poem of Chile,” translated here by Ursula K. Le Guin, this artist’s book was created to introduce the poet’s work to English-speaking audiences.
IBe’ Crawley
My Cotton Book
Ibe Crawley approaches bookmaking as a sculptural practice, describing this piece as a “quilted story.” The artist explores the centrality of cotton farming and processing to African American heritage by depicting its impact on children.
Gail Shaw-Clemons
Old Money
For Gail Shaw-Clemons, the term “old money” represented a “privileged, untouchable class of people who had no correlation to me, whatsoever,” until she realized the critical role her African ancestors had in “creating the first millionaires in America.”
Sabrina Barekzai
Afghan Superstitions, Vol. 2
Incorporating stories that the author heard as a child from friends and family, this zine intersperses Afghan superstitions with photos of Sabrina Barekzai’s family from the 1980s. Northern Virginia’s Afghan community is believed to be the second largest in the United States.
Jennifer White-Johnson with Kevin T. Johnson
Knox Roxs
This zine combines text and photographs to celebrate the author’s five-year-old son Knox, who has autism. Jennifer White-Johnson is dedicated to bringing visibility to neurodiversity issues among children of color.
Robin Ha
Cook Korean!
Robin Ha moved to the United States from Korea at fourteen. This hybrid graphic novel/cookbook contains recipes, colorful illustrations, and information about the basic ingredients found in a Korean kitchen.
Elizabeth Catlett
Walking Blindly
Raised in Washington, DC, Elizabeth Catlett studied at Howard University under artist Loïs Mailou Jones, whose children’s book illustrations are also included in this exhibition. After receiving a grant in 1946 to work in Mexico, Catlett split her time between New York City and Mexico City, primarily creating prints and sculptures. Her images explore themes of maternity and childhood as well as race, politics, violence, and voice.
Sarah Matthews
transient
Many DMV residents are here for a short time, a common scenario for members of military families. Sarah Matthews explores her own experience growing up as a military child, traveling and living without roots. This work, one of a series of three, describes her movement through the DMV, New York City, North Carolina, and Japan.
Ruth Tam
Women of Washington
Ruth Tam, a local cultural maven as well as an artist, spotlights short biographies of iconic women from the District of Columbia, including poet Dolores Kendrick and artist Alma Thomas.
Carolyn Toye
The D.C. I See
Carolyn Toye deploys her photography of the urban landscape to document the beauty she sees in the city in which she grew up. Through simultaneously realistic and abstract images of a rapidly changing Washington, she preserves city views that some developers have openly vowed to eradicate.
Exhibition Credits
All materials presented are courtesy of the Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center, National Museum of Women in the Arts except:
Elizabeth Catlett, Walking Blindly, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Purchased with funds donated in memory of Florence Davis by her family, friends, and the Women’s Committee of NMWA
Suzanne Coley, All I Have; Courtesy of the artist
IBe’ Crawley, My Cotton Book; Courtesy of the artist
Sarah Matthews, transient; Courtesy of the artist
María Veroníca San Martín, In Their Memory; Courtesy of the artist