 Good evening everyone. My name is Alexis and I am a member of the digital artisan here at the Brooklyn Museum. Today I will be, today I am honored to introduce Ms. Allison Saar. Ms. Allison Saar was born on February 5th, 1956, Los Angeles, California. Ms. Saar is an American sculpture, painter, and installation artist whose work explores theme of identity, religion, African culture, diaspora, and spirituality. One recent major solo exhibition that Ms. Saar held was Slate, Suit, and Smart in 2016 at LA Louvre Gallery, which was largely inspired by the effects of the 1927 Great Mississippi Flood. One thing that inspires me about Ms. Saar's work is that all of her art is connected to the African diaspora and feminism. One artwork that I love is the Cotton Eater, which is the head 2013. To me when I look at the artwork I can see the history of slavery where my ancestors used to pick up cotton in the field and based on how much cotton they picked up a day they would get punished, endure severe beating, and potentially face death. So when the masters cut a slave head then instead of throwing out blood he throws out cotton because in my eyes the slaves were treated as if they were not human beings but tools. I want to say thank you very much to Ms. Allison Saar for keeping our history alive. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen please join your hands together for Ms. Allison Saar. Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction and thank you to all of the digital artisans. You guys have been amazing. Thank you so much. Very cool. And from that introduction I just learned that you have the same birthday as my mother in law and your birthday is three days after mine so we are aquariums. So we're going to chat a little bit about some of Allison's work and also some of her mother Betty Saar's work. So this is a work that is in the show. You can see it upstairs, Sapphire from 1985. So I just wanted to start with this and ask you to tell us a little bit about this work and about kind of if this is part of a larger body of work on a larger series. You know I did this piece and it's kind of you know this is actually an interactive piece. She should be standing closed and you are daring you to basically grab her by her tits and look inside of her and it was kind of this sort of you know trying to embrace that sexuality and that womanhood in a way that was kind of like you know yeah okay so you want to cross this line then you better be prepared to face the consequences and so the stuff inside of it you know it's just stuff that I gathered on you know kind of just roaming the streets in New York City anything that was read and anything that kind of felt to me that had some sort of power and fire so it was about power and passion and the strength that comes with that so. So you made this piece while you were living here in New York. Yeah yeah I moved back to Los Angeles in 95 so I was here 82 to 95 so okay and something so when this first came to the museum it was upstairs in conservation which is always an amazing thing for us to see them kind of in that moment and something that really stands out both seeing it there but also in the exhibition is the wood and you working with wood which is not something that we see that often so you can just talk very quickly about the materials and your process. Yeah well the materials are you know I think maybe it's interesting being an artist and not being a sculptor and not having taken these sculpture classes you know is really kind of like just trying to make it out of whatever I had on hand and actually it was a challenge living in New York initially working with wood I would kind of like go through Central Park and gather twigs and get on the subway and everyone would just like leave the subway car because we sit next to the crazy lady with a bundle of sticks on her back and so you know I had to kind of adapt the materials and in 83 and 84 I was at the studio museum which was you know kudos out to the studio museum for providing so many young artists with the opportunity to work and so some of that was where the ceiling tin started coming in and so again was just materials that I would glean you know on the way to the studio and on the way back and just roaming the streets and yeah and then I guess you know my my tool of choice is a chainsaw so that's my okay we heard it here first well the next thing we have I want to take it a little bit you know several decades back this is a photo of your mother Betty who couldn't be with us for this opening but her work is also upstairs and we're so happy to have both of you and in this photograph she's standing in her studio in Los Angeles in 1970 holding a piece called black girl's window from 1969 which is on view upstairs so I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about growing up in Los Angeles as the child of an artist yeah I think it's interesting with so many of the artists that have already spoken in terms of being a woman artist and having children and them living in this you know living either living in the studio or the studio being in the kitchen and so we were really constantly going around at the early you know on the onset my mother was doing print making so we would have like vats of acid next to the stove and things like that so you know kind of precarious but you know it was just something and I think you know we were always given you know things materials to be making stuff while we were in that environment to basically get out from underfoot sort of things so so that was really enriching and then also you know we would also be dragged to I say dragged it felt like being dragged when you're five or six to openings and all these events and so we were getting this you know early you know our vocabulary was really this art vocabulary and really we were reared by communities basically of other artists and black artists and black women are specifically so and what can you tell us what you told me earlier about what we see in the top yeah I'm represented in there that little pigtail drawing is one of those you know like kindergarten silhouette drawings that you do so that's your silhouette as a child that's right and you know and that was also part of you can see in the studio that it's a collection of a lot of different things and so a lot of our drawings and my sister's and and mine strides were incorporated into the work and you know black girls window is really basically a biography kind of looking at her interest in terms of the occult and all of that as well and then you know as she started kind of segueing you know there's also I keep looking backwards I can look here the you know the components of nostalgia and her own personal family and then just kind of starting to look into more political issues at the same time okay wonderful so that is a great segue to a piece that we have upstairs as well liberation of antramima cocktail from 1973 and so this is a part of a series a larger series of liberation of antramima that combines the black power iconography you can see the fist there on the right and on the front the antramima figure in a wine bottle turned into a cocktail so do you see a relationship and I'm sure you do you get this question all the time you can you can skip it if you do but what do you see is the relationship or how do you think about between your work and your mother's work or just is there one whether not necessarily in relation to this just in general well I mean you know I obviously you know gleaned a lot from just being in that environment and coming up and I feel you know for my generation we all owe a great deal of thanks and we're indebted to artists of my mother's generation faith and everyone else that you know they I felt they kind of paved that road for us to kind of step onto the stage and in some ways I you know I myself felt that maybe I didn't need to kind of fight that same fight and I remember sometime like in the mid-80s I got a call from Lucy Lepard saying you know we're doing this show called Art and Politics I'm like oh you've got the wrong number you've got the wrong SAR and I was like you know you need to talk to my mom and she's no no no you know I'm talking you know I'm talking about your work and so you know I guess I you know because I didn't have hand grenades and you know hip slinging mammies with oozes and stuff like that I felt that you know maybe my work was less political but then you know just in telling our own personal stories it becomes political in terms of being honest and and you know maybe not quite as fierce as my other but still trying to be fierce in my own right I don't know I mean I think this is pretty fierce and I I think this is yes both incredibly fierce I'm so glad that you shared that information about the actually I'm sorry it's the museum we can't allow people to yeah to open and close it but I love that knowing that I love that that's part of the motivation she's closed because she's got those little reflectors her nipples light up so and I think you know you can't escape the kind of politics and the real kind of strident critique of women's bodies and their position in the world so you know maybe no no guns but so the last thing I want to talk about very quickly is this flyer from a festival called the new faces new voices new visions which took place at Aaron Davis Hall in 1991 so this is you see Alva Rogers here and Alva Rogers is sitting right here and this was a performance festival as I said that took place in 1991 with two different performances relating to the rodeo caldonia high fidelity for poor performance theater collective that we will hear about in a later panel but Allison I was looking at this in the gallery and I saw and I've looked at this a thousand times in the last however many months and it's a popped out to me visuals Allison's are so great so I just was very curious very quickly to hear about just your time in New York and your time in the 80s and your kind of intersections with some of the other artists in the show who are of the of the younger generation right and in some ways I kind of felt you know maybe in in you know because that my mother was so entrenched in Los Angeles in terms of you know like the scene there was really like gallery 32 with Suzanne Jackson and we had similar Lewis and all these other things that was this a really cohesive group of women artists and when I came here I didn't kind of immediately fall into that so I kind of felt a little like you know without my ballast in a weird sort of way and but eventually it really came about really just kind of looking at other people in the arts working with musicians like Alva and butch Morris and poets and stuff like that so that's kind of where I found my footing and found my community with that and then later on some other organizations that were maybe more active but I just loved that it was you know just you know just a rich opportunity to kind of expand in that and I didn't get maybe I didn't really see that intersection with the music and theater so much in Los Angeles it was very specifically the artists too so when you went back to LA you didn't see that or because you I'm sure we're back when I went back to LA you know you go back to LA and you've got two kids and you you know I just never found that group again I never found that sort of community again which is kind of sad but and now now it's interesting because I'm starting to reach out again to to writers and and other people and trying to get that back together now my kids are out of my hair and sort of things you know try to you know I don't know excellent well thank you actually think that that is okay tell me yeah I mean I really just really wanted actually can you hang on one second I left something in my purse that I wanted to read today and one second yes we can wait go see look you know it of course kind of talks about the timeliness of this exhibition and I'm trying to do my homework a little bit last night to kind of make sure I had dates and things straight for this conversation I looked at a video of my mother talking about the liberation of Antramima and her talking about you know well you know I'm not for violence but you know this was the only way that I really felt that my voice could be heard by you know putting these hand grenades in Antramima's hands and so you know being a glutton for punishment I decided to scroll down to the comments and right everyone's like oh don't do that right and so one of them was you black folk make babies like Antramima makes biscuits and I'm like whoa and I like well you know and I looked at the date and that was from 2016 and so it's a really important time for the show to be here I think it's really important for so many I don't know I love going to these marches and seeing you know babies with placards and stuff like that and we all need to step that up and get emotional step back up to the plate and the game ain't over yet but anyway thank you all so much and thank you for the show