KATHERINE THOMPSON: RAW MATERIAL

February 4 - March 21, 2020

Katherine Thompson: Raw Material features the artist’s studio-based photographs that embrace the pop visual language of product and fashion advertisements while posing questions about the troublesome connections between consumerism, visual culture, and race in America. 

About the Exhibition:

In the fall of 2017 two outraged reactions to the sale and display of raw cotton stalks as decorative home furnishings went viral on social media. The resulting national debate divided into two main camps, those that see cotton as an inert inoffensive material, acceptable for use as decoration, and those for whom a neutral view of this material is impossible, given its associations with the history of American slavery.

For Katherine Thompson, this debate, like so many other issues related to race in America, is a question about identity and visibility. The controversy is not simply about the material itself but the network of visual associations and historical connotations that tether that specific material to our understanding and assumptions about the world. What we choose to see makes the difference. 

Between Cultures

In her series Between Cultures (2019) Thompson creates multiple “self-portraits” in which she deploys a minimal vocabulary of materials including patterned fabrics, cheap mass produced home decor or craft items, and her own body. In these images she presents herself as various African American personas, based on representations of the black body, both historical and contemporary, that circulate through American popular culture in print and audio-visual media. Like advertisements, Thompson’s portraits have a deliberate artifice, due her use of inexpensive props and flat lighting. This seemingly simple staging and sometimes playful design lends the images an atmosphere of ambiguity, but a close examination of the postures, materials, and motifs she chooses to include reveal the images to be fraught with questions about our tolerance for stereotypes, and the historical materials and attitudes that propel them. 

Thompson uses herself as a model. In each image she shows aspects of her outward appearance but, because she is always disguised in her performance and subsumed by the role she is playing, she is never truly visible as a subject herself. Showing the influence of pioneering figures of conceptually driven photography such as the American artist Cindy Sherman and Cameroonian photographer Samuel Fosso, Thompson’s work inverts the normal understanding of the self-portrait as a form of self-revelation, and instead focuses on the impact of representational tropes and societal expectations on the very notion of selfhood. 

Americana

In the sequence of four photographs that comprise Thompson’s Americana series (2019), she continues her exploration of passive stereotypes and the complexities of being a minority in America. This time she focuses her attention on a familiar patriotic theme found on materials sold in home crafts stores. In her sequence of four photos, Thompson repeats the same angle and set which has a fabric backdrop featuring a kitschy American liberty pattern that includes images of the Liberty Bell, the Statue of Liberty, George Washington, and other patriotic symbols mixed in with American flags and stars. In the first image in the sequence she presents just this backdrop. In the foreground of the next image appears a white cotton gloved hand on a dark skinned arm holding a small American flag. This arm and hand belongs to a character Thompson refers to as “The American.” The next image is similar to the last, except the position of the arm has changed, suggesting that “the American” has been waving the flag. In the final image in the sequence the hand is no longer holding the flag but instead gently pulling away the backdrop cloth to reveal what appears to be a black void.

This sequence of images together act as a kind of puzzle or cipher, with Thompson again asking the viewer to make decisions about what they choose to see. Do you see this patriotic pattern as comforting and celebratory of American values? Or is this backdrop an example of the laughable propaganda that helps to obscure a true reckoning with America’s past? It seems likely that the black arm wearing the white cotton glove in the photographs represents a figure at some sort of formal ceremony or service, but deciding the specific identity of that figure is left blank. Are they a part of the military, a band leader, a waiter, a pallbearer, an archivist, or some other figure? Does the act of rotely celebrating stock images associated with freedom constitute a service to that ideal? What if, historically, those images weren’t meant to represent you, your family, or your people’s story? 

Still Lifes and Collages

This exhibition also features a selection of Thompson’s still life and collage based works. Her still life photographs (2015 -2019) cover a similar conceptual territory explored in the Between Cultures and Americana series. These images recontextualize various common items she comes across in her mining of suburban big-box craft stores to highlight these items’ strange or ironic aspects, especially when viewed through the lens of a politically polarized and racialized society. 

Thompson’s collages are a departure from the other works in the show. Here she concentrates on representations of black women in beauty culture advertisements, particularly those concerned with hair care. Her method is similar to arranging a mood board or scrapbook, in which magazine cut-outs are juxtaposed against bright patterns and other adornments. Occasionally a snippet of text is included that suggests the lengths a black woman must go to achieve their desired look. In the context of the rest of this exhibition, phrases such as “You don’t need another relaxer, you need a miracle”  are evocative of the pressures placed upon black women in a society that seems to prioritize the updating of their “look” over a conscientious engagement with their reality.

This exhibition is made possible with support from the George Mason University School of Art and the Office of University Life.

About the Artist:

Katherine Thomson is a photographer and designer living and working in Northern Virginia. She is an alumnus of the George Mason University School of Art, BFA Photography 2015. 

For more information visit:https://katherinesimonethompson.com/