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Leigh continues her examination of tropes of the ethnographic object and issues of authorship through the combination of porcelain and medical equipment in Brooch #2. Through the use of porcelain, Leigh creates flesh colored bananas and uses them in place of prized jewels. Combining the bananas, which are evocative of their source of export, with skin tones, Leigh points to the collector’s role in establishing authorship with regards to objects which teeter between artifact and art object, ultimately creating a conflicted, contemporary artifact.
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Combining evocative terracotta forms with industrial elements such as medical equipment and radio antennae, Simone Leigh's hybrid sculptural works evoke the Pan-African references and space-themed gestures of Afro-Futurism. Leigh investigates concepts of the black body, labor and marking, most visible in the Timberland work boot imprint. Queen Bee is a marriage of these concerns and also a response to the influences of colonialism, as its form echoes European design in its chandelier-like construction. Queen Bee’s dependence on the radio antennae, a nearly obsolete source of communication, suggests a failure in advancement and relegates Queen Bee, despite the title’s references to empire, wealth and its metallic allure of futurism, to the realms of the archaic.
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