lavender
Lavendar is an artistic representation of Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday and the analytical essay by Nancy Chick paper on author Marita Bonner use of Purple Flowers in her work. Throughout Bonner’s career, Chick explains Bonners use of flowers to symbolize the status symbol and sexual desire of white womanhood. Whereas Bonner use of the color purple was to refer to white women who were seen as “colored” or to reference one that’s stained by blood. Chick explains how Bonners work throughout her life she often drew comparisons of whiteness being represented as purple liles or purple flowers to refer to their current position in society by their relations with black men or not conforming to the societal normalities for white women; stepping away from the ability to obtain and fulfill the male desire of woman being sexual beings but also seen as clean and close to holiness. This analysis made me think, if a white woman can be seen as stained and colored, then what does that make a black woman? Are we not even seen as women? This made me think of the different symbols of black femininity and the over-sexualization and asexualization of black women.
The idea of referring to femininity drew a comparison to the song Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday, a song about the lynching of African Americans in the Jim Crow South. Flowers being the female reproductive part of the plant bears fruit that is essentially the child of the plant. That made me think of women bearing children just for them to be “strange fruit hanging from the Poplar tree.” What resonated with me was the lyric “scent of magnolias sweet and fresh, then the sudden smell of burnin’ flesh” and its use of flowers being juxtaposed with death and murder; Essentially making the magnolias in description purple in the eyes of Marita Bonner. Questions such as what are objects of femininity? How can I symbolize the meanings of purple, flowers, and the stigma that surrounds black women and their bodies?
The making of the corset, a tangible representation of femininity, sexuality, and historically a status of wealth, was purposely made transparent to how black women are and will always be exposed. Exposed to unprovoked opinions, physical harm, unrealistic and outlandish stigmas, and societal norms, nothing a black woman wears will make her less exposed. The embroidery on the corset is of a magnolia flower with a rope hanging lavender flowers.
White femininity and beauty will always attempt to uphold the white beauty standard at all costs, including the metaphorical killing of the lavender flowers, or someone that is colored. The accompanying illustrations are renderings of my responses to the research I did for this project.
This piece is a part of the jumpstart art 2021 exhibition which can be viewed here.
