EXHIBITION STATEMENT:

What the Mirror Said is an exhibition that borrows its namesake title from a poem published in 1980 by the legendary African American poet, Lucille Clifton. Clifton’s words are written as an affirmation to Black women and serve as a mapping to guide Black girls and women to see themselves as a reflection of grandeur, of boundlessness, where society has localized their being.

This exhibition is an invitation into the collective imaginings of several Black women printmakers who have turned the gaze inward—as a mode of self-reflexivity and autonomy. In our largest group exhibition to date, Black Women of Print utilizes printmaking as a device to recollect and visually narrate how the artists see themselves and the world around them and to imagine otherwise.¹ 
-Tanekeya Word, exhibition curator
 

Black Women of Print was founded in October 2018 by Tanekeya Word, a Black woman, visual artist, art educator, scholar, and fine art printmaker who resides in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Word was interested in creating an equitable safe place for Black women printmakers who were underrepresented in the discipline of printmaking, a space that is often extolled as democratic.

¹Sharpe, Christina. “Lose Your Kin.” The New Inquiry, 16 November 2016, and In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.

FEATURED ARTIST:

Chloe Alexander
Dr. Deborah Grayson
LaToya M. Hobbs
Ann Johnson
Delita Martin
Althea Murphy-Price
Karen J. Revis
Stephanie Santana
Tanekeya Word

FEATURED ARTIST:

“Art exhibit carves new space for Black women printmakers,” northcountryradio.org, April 2022.  The story features an interview of visiting artist Chloe Alexander by reporter Monica Sandreczki.