Betye Saar is a living legend.  Born in 1926, Saar has been challenging, not only art enthusiasts and dedicated museum goers, but the art world at large with her profound commentary on race in the United States.  Utilizing a found object format, Saar’s assemblages pay homage to the art historical tradition that precedes them.  Duchamp’s Readymades and Rauschenberg’s refuse-infused “collages” may have paved the way for Saar’s found object sculptures and installations, but she has expertly used this undervalued technique to forge the necessary path forward to address discrimination, prejudice, slavery and the black experience in America. 

It is the very essence of the upcycling trend that permeates social media and Pinterest – giving old, discarded items new life, often in surprising ways – that infuses Saar’s work with a relevance that feels just as timely in 2021 as it did in the late 1960’s.  That was the decade that saw the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Watts Rebellion and pushed Saar to move from a 2-D art-making practice to three dimensions.  Saar upped the ante with her choice of discarded items, frequently choosing objects that not only depicted harmful black stereotypes but were often outright racist.

A repeated motif seen throughout Saar’s oeuvre is the “mammy” archetype, which is sometimes depicted in the guise of the stereotypic advertising trope, Aunt Jemima.  By including this imagery in her work, Saar challenges the viewer to really think about the woman, and specifically the black woman, used as the face of a corporate ad campaign.  When we do consider the implications, a whole host of questions are impossible to ignore with answers that are shameful. Was this figure a real person? Was this woman a slave? Is it ok to use racist stereotypes of women to sell a product? Is the role of Aunt Jemima simply a character for an actor to play? Does the character of Aunt Jemima distort our perceptions of black women in the real world?

Betye Saar’s disruption of the “mammy” and Aunt Jemima narrative is triggered (literally) by suggestions of liberation and the inclusion of weapons, most notably, guns of varying size.  Upending the notion of “mammy” as caregiver, Saar suggests that her Aunt Jemimas must be set free, released from the bonds of historical slavery and corporate slavery to racist tropes.  Saar empowers her Aunt Jemimas with weaponry in case they must take their freedom by force.