Bowdoin College Homepage
Bowdoin College Museum of Art Logo and Wordmark

Advanced Search
Preview image of work. Conte crayon drawing on paper, 3-D shooting gallery target,  Kin XLVI (Follie) 38491

2019.44

Recommend keywords

Help us make our collections more accessible by providing keywords to describe this artwork. The BCMA uses the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus to provide consistent keywords. Enter a keyword in the field below and you will be prompted with a list of possible matching AAT preferred terms.

 
 

Kin XLVI (Follie)

Export record as: Plain text | JSON | CDWA-Lite | VRA Core 4

Artist

Whitfield Lovell (The Bronx, New York, NY, 1959 – )

Title

Kin XLVI (Follie)

Creation Date

2011

Century

early 21st century

Dimensions

30 x 22 1/4 x 2 in. (76.2 x 56.52 x 5.08 cm)

Object Type

mixed media

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

Conte crayon drawing on paper, 3-D shooting gallery target

Credit Line

Museum Purchase, Greenacres Acquisition Fund and Collectors Collaborative

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

2019.44

The lives of many Black women will never be known because their histories have been disregarded both by scholars and mainstream American society. How, then, might one recover these hidden histories? Whitfield Lovell combines conté crayon drawings and found objects to revitalize lost histories in his Kin series. In Kin XLVI, Lovell pairs an object used for target practice with a drawing of a Black woman in profile. This juxtaposition suggests a narrative about the anonymous sitter, drawing inspiration from images Lovell collected from the period between the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Movement. As Lovell puts it, he aims to “illuminate the humanity and richness of these ordinary people.” In the composition presented here, the woman’s profile is paired with a shooting gallery target, prompting one to consider the history of violence on the Black body and issues of domestic violence toward women.