Alison Saar
4N’20
Wood, tin, tar
2006Emerging, beautiful life.
Workers remove Alison Saar’s Fall from the installation of her sculptures in Madison Square Park (2011)
James Ewing photograph of Alison Saar’s Fall installed at Madison Square Park (2011)
Alison Saar’s Blood, Sweat, Tears - wood, copper, bronze, paint, tar (2005)
“Alison Saar: I think I have to do that, mix the sacred and the profane in my work; it’s a process of exorcism. If I didn’t do it in the work, I’d just jump off a cliff. These are constructive ways of facing tragic, painful experiences. And that’s how the slaves survived all that pain—through creating, by making music, dance, poetry. That’s how, you know, we survive in Haiti, in Mexico. You just somehow turn it around; you’re up against death, then you make death this buffoon, this trickster, and that’s how you deal with what you face, and that’s how your survive it, because otherwise you’d just lay down and die.”
Excerpt from “Talking Art with Alison Saar,” from Art on My Mind by bell hooks
Installation view of Alison Saar’s exhibition
“Alison Saar: Actually, when I first used that phrase, ‘floating between two worlds,’ I was talking about the two worlds of reality and magic. Yet when critics applied that statement to my background, that made sense as well. Meanings change. Pieces that I made ten years ago have very different meanings to me now. When people ask me to help them understand this work, I have to state again and again that for me the work means different things at different times, depending on my experience and as I accumulate knowledge.”
Excerpt from “Talking Art with Alison Saar,” from Art on My Mind by bell hooks
Alison Saar portrait by Paul O’Connor (2005)
“bell hooks: There is so much cultural criticism that extols the virtues of cultural hybridity, traveling, the notion of bricolage, of moving between different environments, border crossing, all these terms—yet I am fascinated when critics don’t bring these theoretical standpoints into the discussion of your work. They continually quote a phrase you once used where you said you often feel as though you are ‘floating between two worlds’—usually to refer to your having both African-American and Euro-American ancestry. Since you talk about this mixed background, critics often ignore the significance of the ‘border crossings’ you choose that are not ‘givens.’ Much of the passion in your work is expressed as you celebrate those border crossings that take place in the imagination, in the mind as well as in real life, and those journeys are not talked about enough.”
Excerpt from “Talking Art with Alison Saar,” from Art on My Mind by bell hooks
