Facebook
Twitter
Google+
Email
Artist Alison Saar (daughter of renowned artist Betye Saar) is currently featured in a unique exhibition at L.A. Louver focussing on her printmaking practice. Syncopation is open through February 29, 2020.
On the occasion of Saar’s remarkable exhibition Silt, Soot, and Smut at L.A. Louver in 2016, the gallery produced this video featuring the artist in her studio. She discusses the research and inspiration for the exhibition, on the destruction wrought – particularly on African Americans – from the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 through Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which Saar witnessed while a resident at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans in 2013.
From L.A. Louver:
In this body of work, Saar uses figuration to weave narratives relating to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, sourcing inspiration from historical documentation, mythology, poetry and music. […] During her 2013 residency at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, Saar was dismayed to see little had been done to rebuild African American communities that had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina nearly eight years prior. Upon her return to Los Angeles, she began research into the histories of American floods and their effect on African Americans. The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 peaked her interest. The historic catastrophe displaced hundreds of thousands of people in the American South, and wreaked havoc and destruction particularly within the black population. Saar was also intrigued with the cultural implications that resulted from the flood and its influence on the music, dance and literature of that time.
