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| True Love Galennie, 2022 |
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| Ruth Afontaine Family, 2022 |
Danielle Scott’s: Kinfolk is a culmination of work based on a year of research and self-reflection as the artist traveled to multiple plantations and spiritually connected with the subjects in her work. The gallery features impoverished African Americans collaged with embroidered fabrics and lace to decorate their pixelated ghostly bodies. Atop their heads are golden halos, heightening their status as catholic saints within the compositions. In the background, the viewer can see remnants of slave cabins, with a registry of names from the Freed People of Color Database, ranging between the 1850s-1860s. By creating multilayered assemblages, Scott is developing an intervention by making the viewer internalize questions about her work and think about the history of slavery in America. She addresses heritage and identity by including freed people of color's names and decorates archival photographs with colorful fabric prints reminiscent of African clothing. While the people in the pictures were disempowered by their oppressors, Scott can reclaim their power by allowing them to take up space in galleries and tell their narratives within the composition.
The collection of work was originally named Ancestral Call. The name highlighted the spiritual call from the past, beckoning the artist and viewers to return to their ancestral roots and uncover layers of history that have been buried and forgotten. Her research began within the archives of bookstores before she sought out her own experiences. She walked in the footsteps of the former enslaved, exposed herself to the harsh conditions of the cotton fields, and delved into the darkest parts of America’s history. While the research was taxing physically and mentally, the work conveys a multilayered exploration of historical narratives. Scott incorporates her modern photographs to juxtapose the archival cutouts in her work. Susan Sontag’s quote, “Photographs really are experiences captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood” (Sontag), applies to Danielle’s research as photography is the base of her assemblages. Scott finds the beauty in the struggle of the former enslaved by integrating her own photographs of slave cabins she took during her journey and displaying cotton she picked herself, embedded in resin, displayed atop aluminum molds, and in jars for people to handle. As stated by Scott, the ritual of picking cotton is to allow viewers the experience of contemplating the desolate conditions of enslaved people. Imagine picking seeds out of a single cotton ball; now imagine doing that for seventy hours a week in the hot sun. The interaction between the viewer and the cotton installation is one of many interventions Scott brings to Kinfolk.
True Love Galennie, 2022, features a maternal figure surrounded by children and crowed with a decorated halo. The children huddle around her for the photo, dressed in ornate prints and fabrics like royalty. However, the regality of the composition is interrupted by the presence of the slave cabin interior. Upon closer inspection, it appears she assembled multiple slave cabin photographs to build her own for the family in the composition. The subjects in this assemblage are pixelated and ghost-like, while the modern-day photographs juxtapose against their figures. Tris Mccall states in their article, “ Certain details are in sharp focus while others fade into the background. The natural world is often a rush of evocative and near-formless shapes. At the same time, individual interiors are rendered with precision, right down to the crockery on the table of the gut-punch family scene” (Mccall). Danielle Scott sourced the family photograph from a textbook; the act of taking the photo and blowing it up causes the image to be blurry, giving the desired effect that this photograph is from the past, while the slave cabin imagery is from the modern-day. The multilayers of history provide a historical narrative while celebrating the figures in the composition.
Ruth Afontaine Family, 2022, is based on a photograph of a family or a group of people attending a church or schoolhouse. The building is reminiscent of an old slave church, taken apart and rebuilt with strips of photographs, covered in black and gold paint, and adorned with gold fabric to accent the roof and windows. Some figures are dressed in a combination of vibrant materials, the same fabrics used in other compositions in the gallery. At the top of the stairs, the viewer can see the saint standing at the doorway while the rest of the family trails down the path toward the viewer. In the background of the piece, the names of freed people take up space, filling the sky and the cracks in the church building. Ruth Afontaine Family, 2022, shows a gathering of a united family, with all of their family members accounted for. Scott states that the name of the pieces comes from her research during the work’s creation; therefore, the Ruth Afontaine family must have been able to remain together like the people in the photograph. The viewer can only interpret this, and further research would need to be done to confirm one’s interpretation. By doing personal deep dives into her artwork, the viewer fulfills the project's purpose by asking questions and critically thinking about the individuals within the archival photographs. The historical narratives Danielle Scott presents to the gallery inspire people to research and learn more about the history of slavery in America.
Danielle Scott’s work in Kinfolk is inherently activist as she stages an intervention about race, power, gender, and injustice in America while uplifting the former enslaved as saints and monarchs. Scott aims to confront viewers with historical narratives and expose the history of slavery in America that is being pushed out of the curriculum. Overall, she presents individual stories about the people featured in her artwork, supplementing this with the research table that people can handle and read. For example, in Bell Hooks’ essay, “The Oppositional Gaze,” she states, “ The politics of slavery, of racialized power relations, were such that the slaves were denied their right to gaze” (Hooks, 115). All the individuals in the photographs have their power back, gazing at the viewer, crowned and decorated with signs of affluence. With artists like Danielle Scott working to conserve history and uplift historical narratives, African American history will remain in the minds of the American public.
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| Me in 2018 |
For my selfie, I picked an older photograph of myself from 2018. This was the last year I visited Puerto Rico while my grandmother was alive, and as part of my research, I wanted to find places that I remembered most about my visits to my family's home on the island. In my assemblage, I added my old church, some traditional tiles on my shawl, an image of a famous cliff, and a monument in Cabo Rojo. I started my research by "going home" on google maps in search of landmarks in Boquerón. From there, I wanted to see if I could find my way to my grandparent's house purely from memory by tracing out the highways and roads. After following the highways, I remembered the monument of Dr. Ramón Emeterio Betances, a surgeon who led an insurrection against the Spanish occupation and an abolitionist movement in Puerto Rico. From this monument, I could find my way home without trouble. By making this virtual journey without an address and blurry satellite imagery, I encountered landmarks I remembered from my childhood. While I struggle with my Hispanic identity, it does not take away from the fact that my entire heritage is based on the island of Puerto Rico.
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