Fight To Save Your Life Analysis

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Gender:
Two prominent artists that engage in issues of gender and race are Faith Ringgold and Murray DePillars. When looking at Faith Ringgold’s work, specifically her Slave Rape Series one can see that she does not shy away from the painful history of black womanhood. When looking specifically at Slave Rape Series: Fight: To Save Your Life, 1972 we see Ringgold’s use of the female nude to confront stereotypes of black women. She paints a pregnant black woman with a surprised look on her face holding her pregnant stomach with one hand and a hatchet in the other. She also paints her surrounded by plants, thus further suggesting that she is a slave running away to save her own life and the life of her unborn child. This painting (done on a quilt) acknowledges the vulnerability of this woman but it also acknowledges her struggle and her resistance to her oppressor (an assumed slave owner). Because such a horrific subject like slave rape is painted on an object usually associated with comfort and safety, Ringgold forces her audience to consider the …show more content…

It uses found objects and images from white America’s past. She uses three different Aunt Jemima images: the mammie image from the box repeated in the background of the piece, the grotesque cookie jar Jemima, and an image of Aunt Jemima holding an upset mixed-race child. She uses theses found objects to remind her viewers that these racist images do exist and in many cases live on. The cookie jar is a particularly shocking reminder that America’s blatantly racist past is indisputably there and not very distant. There are many allusions in this piece of art- the cotton at Aunt Jemima’s feet recalls slavery, the mammy image at the bottom is covered with a black-power fist, and of course Aunt Jemima is given a gun! All of these allusions and Saar’s appropriation of found objects and old recycled images help Saar create a renewed Aunt

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