Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander, Ph.D., Assistant Curator of American Art, Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University: Willie Cole’s artistic practice is centered around exploring his African ancestry through repurposing “Western” objects, such as high-heeled shoes, hairdryers, and clothing irons. Household Find features an old ironing board, which signifies two things in Cole’s symbolic universe: “When the ironing board is horizontal, it represents a ship. When it’s vertical, it’s a shield.” In this horizontal orientation, the ironing board bottom is hauntingly evocative of the famous eighteenth-century Brookes slave ship plan (pictured below). Cole’s consistent use of the ironing board in his work also pays homage to Sarah Boone, the African American woman who patented the forerunner to the modern ironing board in 1892.
Provenance
Provenance:
Bibliography
Miriam Seidel, Iconic Structures 1990 - 1995, Philadelphia: The University of the Arts, 1995; The Stanford University Museum of Art Journal vols. XXVI–XXVII, 1996–1997, p. 76 repr.; Sally Sumida, "Household Appliances: Two Contemporary Assemblages by Willie Cole," Cantor Arts Center Journal, IV, 2004-2005, pp. 44-55, repr. p. 44
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