Ann Zingha, Queen of Matamba

Transcript:

Jacqueline Bishop: One of my favorites!

Shawnta Smith-Cruz: Tell us about this one.

Jacqueline Bishop: One of my favorites, one of my favorites. I am so in love with these early African images. Like I stated before, it was quite the job to find images of women, early New York women, which is a period I was working through, as New York started its formulations to become what it is. And so I felt like I'd gotten so lucky with these two African American women, and I love these images for a number of reasons. One of which is the sense of self that the images convey, and the sense of self-fashioning that goes on in these images. As horrid and terrible as the institution of slavery was back then, I like to think of when I talk to these women, because I develop a relationship with the people whose images I'm using, that they try to, as best they can, retain some agency.

I also like the fact that these women seem almost protective of each other, seem almost in communion with each other, and that's very, very important to me. I see my work as repair work oftentimes. Though the material is very hard, and it's very difficult sometimes to look at, when I get a chance to repair some of the damage, that's what I seek to do, which has put these women in loving embrace and conversation with each other, and demonstrating their beauty, their humanity, their femaleness, their femininity in just, terrible circumstances.

And the flowers are healing flowers, and meant to do that. Flowers that are also native to New York. Behind them, though, is a letter that was sketched by a European, so that presence is never far away. But I want to believe that these women, at least now, have each other.