7) IDENTITY in dialogue with Betye Saar
The Object
This wearable sculpture contains a small figurine embedded within a rough mineral structure. The figure depicts a dark-skinned doll-like body holding a rectangular form. Its simplified, stylized features recall mass-produced figurines and toys that once circulated widely in domestic environments.
The surrounding material partially encloses the figure, as if the object has been absorbed into the structure that holds it. The sculpture does not attempt to restore the figurine or present it as decoration. Instead, the object is preserved as it is — fragile, uneasy, and historically charged.
Within the ring, the figurine no longer functions as an ornament but as a fragment of visual culture.
Material
The structure surrounding the figurine is composed of a ceramic–concrete composite developed within the Post-Colonial Gold series. Its dark, matte surface contrasts with the smoother surface of the figurine.
The small object carries the visual language of a cultural artifact rather than that of a precious material. Its significance does not lie in rarity or craftsmanship, but in the imagery it carries.
Within the ring the figurine becomes both object and evidence.
Core Idea
For centuries everyday objects have helped shape ideas about identity, race, and hierarchy. Toys, household decorations, and small figurines often reflected the social structures of the societies that produced them.
These objects circulated widely and were rarely questioned. Their imagery appeared ordinary, even harmless.
Post-Colonial Gold asks what happens when such objects are no longer treated as neutral decoration, but examined as historical documents.
This work explores the value of reinterpretation.
Meaning
The figurine preserved within this sculpture represents a visual language that once circulated without resistance. Seen today, these images reveal how cultural objects participated in constructing racial stereotypes.
By isolating the figure within the ring, the sculpture shifts its status. What once functioned as decoration becomes testimony.
The work does not erase the image. Instead, it repositions it — allowing the viewer to confront the history embedded in the object.
In Dialogue with Betye Saar
For more than six decades Betye Saar has explored how everyday objects carry cultural memory. Working with assemblage, she collects discarded materials — photographs, toys, advertisements, and figurines — and repositions them within new visual structures.
Beginning in the late 1960s Saar started incorporating objects that depicted racist stereotypes of African Americans. Rather than discarding these materials, she exposed them. By embedding them within assemblages she forced viewers to confront the histories they carried.
Her landmark work The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972) transformed a stereotypical figurine into a symbol of resistance and critique.
This sculpture resonates with that approach. The figurine is not hidden or destroyed. Instead it is embedded within the structure of the work where it remains visible.
Like Saar’s assemblages, the work does not attempt to erase the past. It preserves the object while allowing its imagery to be seen through a different historical awareness.
Within Post-Colonial Gold
Post-Colonial Gold proposes an alternative system of value. Instead of gold functioning as the universal measure of worth, each wearable sculpture reveals another dimension of human significance.
Across the series, value shifts away from material wealth toward the cultural and historical meanings embedded in objects.
In this work the value lies in reinterpretation — the ability to revisit images that once shaped social hierarchies and to understand them within a different historical framework.
Artist Reflection
This work emerged from an interest in how everyday objects carry powerful cultural meanings. Objects that once appeared harmless or decorative often reveal deeper histories when viewed through a contemporary perspective.
By embedding such a figurine within the sculpture, the work preserves the object while shifting the context in which it is seen.
The ring does not erase the past.
It holds the image in place, allowing it to be seen again — differently.