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    Hernandez - Aesthetics of Excess

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    Mónica A. Ríos

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    AESCHECICS «OFEXCESS © sore Dake! Printed in the United States of America a acid-fee paper so Designed by Courtney Leigh Richardson nd Aimee C. Harrison ‘Typeset in Arno Pra, San Marco, and Trade Gothic ‘by Coppeline Book Services Library of Congres Cataloging in Publiation Dats Names: Hernandes,illan [dat] author. Tile: Aes artand pe and Latina embodiment / lan Hernander. Description: Durham Duke University Press, 2030 | Includes biographical references and inde, sof Black is ofexcess tiers: ucen 02005166 (pint) ce o:00567 (ebook) shires (hardcover) 5» (paperback) an osvertoass (boat) bets: Body image Socal aspects | Aesthetics. | aman bodyn popu cale,|Artandrac.| Body image ina Body mageinwomen. | Body image init, African spanc American women, Castor ue uae. s030 (pin ccHM636 (ebook |99€ 3s 4/88—desy se athaps/ cn lc gov/sor00166 vals haps://cn be go/ao100167 {COVER ART: Justas.a Reminder to Myself 2014. CRYSTAL PEARL Dae Une atl acnolagsthe onerous sappor ethene earn, Sin Du Dent Socal Sere ‘which provided funds toward the publication of this book. 7 DEDICATED TO MASAYA, ZAIDA MILAGROS “GRAM” MACHADO. AND EVERYONE WHO PARTI IPATED IN WOMEN ON THE RISE! INTRODUCTION Inaco4,| founded the feminist community arts project Women on the Rise! (worr) at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, Florida. 1 developed wore in response to learning about the increasing number of girls committed to the juvenile justice system in Florida in the early 20008. When I researched the kind of educational opportunities available to them while incarcerated, | found that none of their classes provided a space for creative release in the midst of what was a profoundly disorienting and dis- tressing experience. earned thatthe girls were regularly subject to various forms of dubiously effective, and at times violating, state-supported group and individual counseling. When not in those spaces, the girls were either in remedial education sessions in dismal classrooms or forced to entertain. themselves in the cell block with random collections of old pvp movies and books. ‘With that knowledge, I designed WoT asan intergenerational feminist art praxis, rather than a form of art therapy, self-work, or earceral reform. “The goal ofthis praxis was to generate a place for gitls of color, both in de- tention andat other community sites, to engage in self-expression and crit cal dialogue, practices that they were either soc cluded from (being artists) or were believed incapable of (being theorists). and institutionally ex. “Woekshops for woTR were conducted offsite from the museum ji government, and educa tions that work with gil (ages tem to swenty-fve), The project consisted of workshops that intro, duced participants to the work of femi and queer artists, ‘These workshops, which were fre of charge, culminated in the production of artworks by participants ina range of media that were inspired by and re. sponded to the particular practice ofthe featured artists. For example: girls created and documented silhouette forms they forged in nature with the ‘bodies forthe workshop on Ana Mendieta’ Silueta pieces of the 19705; they captured imagesin their schools and neighborhoods through gilded frames ‘when they learned about Loraine O'Grady’s Art Is... (1983) project; and they composed performative instruction writings such as those found in ‘Yoko Ono's book Grapefruit (1964). Bedazzled photo-collage self-portraits are made when WOTR covers Mickalene Thomas, and participants fashion elaborate headdresses foriconic women ofcolorin the project based on Fite- rork. These workshops were collaboratively led and developed ists Nereida Garcia-Ferraz, Guadalupe Figueras, Crystal Pearl rosch, Dionorah de Jesis Rodriguez, Monica teen) and young women (ages ceighteet ducted workshops based on their own work, and Wor organized trips for participants to vi s'studios and exhi ‘This pedagogy fostered creative intergent tionships and genealogies between young working-class Black and Latina ‘women and the artists who teach and are taught in work. By focusing on ‘other artist, the projectalso allowed part wut having to make revelations that could make them vul- nerablein a group context. This occurred, for example, in workshops based on the work of Yayoi Kusama, where we discussed how Kusama’s method their surfaces with polka dots provides i the hallucinatory episodes she suffers. teaching for wor prompted the gitls to utilize polka dots and other ions of objects in Kusama inspired collages. The resultant abstract works of colorful patterns con czaled the gis’ feeling, leaving them to decide whether or not to discuss ‘the meaning behind their work ina s ir workin a group setting, Several girs shared that they chose to obliterata troubling fear experion ‘ Ther 2 / Introduction tyled bodies of Black and Latina women and I view the spectacul In particul spring and summer of 2007 led me to study how the discourse of aesthetic lebates, significa ture the boundaries imate and deviant forms of gendered Blackness and Lat events that occurred in tina giels and women artfully trouble these binar and creative, aesthetic labor. “Miss, You Look Like Bratz Doll” was teaching a wot R workshop at the Miami-Dade County Regional Ju vvenile Detention Center in the spring of 2007 with a group of girls along the local Cuban American artists Crystal Pearl Molinary and Jessica discussed how ie and body image art project. remember how I was dressed. That day, | was wearing tight black leg- sings under a fited olive green sweater dress with a V neckline. My shoes ‘were vintage-style, bone-white peep-toe heels. Halfof my hair wasstreaked with chunky blonde highlights, and it was flat ironed straight. I had thick black eyelineron and brick ted lipstick. At one point in the workshop, apar- ticipant told me, “Miss, you look like a Bratz dol ly made-up bedroom eyes, platform eels, and mini- -sponse to the comment was the same as everyone else in the room—laughter—and I enjoyed following the girls jovial yet intense debate over whether Tharbored toward my own, 1 drew upon my financial precarity, as my educational a ; when I was.a young fied ourselves as mid. Look. lean see how acknowledging our working-class status woul have meant denying ourselves dignity and accepting the discourse of failure ipant’scharacteria ing. class nk [look like a Bratz doll, whi sexually harassed me as I've walked along the streets of Miami, or the older = wholooked at me disdainfully when I wasa pregnant nineteen-year Other than perhaps my thickrimmed glasses, as my body navigates spaces, does anything separate me from these so-called low-class Like Ididevery Thursday, I picked up copy ofthe Miami New Times, Miami's free alternative weekly newspaper. The cover of the June 14, 2007, edition struck me. Itwas a close-up shot of two teenage Latina girls aga Pink background. They had exaggerated, vaud and wide-open eye ew Times cover text read si lettering across the botto front page, framing the po ‘Chonga”is a colloquial term ust one 2 Pose ete “woh J low-class, slutty, tough, and ey, in Miami to describe s0-< women, The cover was articulating acharacteriation, the precy a type; through staging the gis bodies against aso and the corresponding, definitional term “chonga, cated, “This is what chonga gi The gts in the photo were the creators of the widely viewed video “Chongalicious,” a parody that mocks young Latina women wien tight clothing, heavy pines, andlange hoop earings. The performs do not seldentify a chongas, were the subjects of the Miami New pe cover story featuredinaniterview about theit"Chongaicious"vhe expected and rapid rise to popularity. sau al notice ofthis visual impression, joined with wha knew sbout the pereption of chongasin Miami at bad gies hen ri sparred met elect not only upon my own girlhood experiences ofr sting bodily sl presentation, buton those ofthe working class Latinnany Back giels I worked with as an educator through work. In that mone viewing the Miami New Times cover image of these Latina gc, eee such was at stake in the chonga’s dramatic coming into discourse, The meaning making around class and gendered tacialized body ay thetics that appeared to me in these encounters animatesthe case stud, on the art and polit of Black and Latina embodiment that make up the book, which span from 2007 to 2014. This wasa time marked in the US by economic recession, increasing urban gentrification and deportation of migrants, and the murder of Trayvon Martin, a teenage African Americas boy, in Sanford, Florida, which sparked the Black Lives Matter movemest while Black and Latinx ives were being systematically deval ued by violence andan economy failing significant part due to predatory mortgage lending practices aimed at working-class and racialized popu lations, Black and Latina women and girls were achieving unprecedented success and in various cultural sites. The young Latina gies who created the viral YouTube video “Chongalicious” 28 oun tat . sare. 7 ‘ous” became instant celebri- ies, appearing on internationally broadcast Spanish-language tele networks. Nicki Minaj became one of the most fancy art ain stream hip-hop artists. And the work of Black women artists like Wangechi Mutuand Kara Walker became some of the most highly visible and valuable artinthe contemporary art world ‘Yet these moments of woman and girl of color cultural recognition and ‘material achievement also occasioned cultural debates that marked Black sexually deviant, and thus damag- and Latina bodies as ake, low-class, ugly, 6 / lntroduction age of their communities, The sociocultural boundary valuing of Black and La- ing to the acstl od by the differe representation is what conc ts are producedand negotiated inc Iyze how theseasses tion, the reception ofbody a thecreative andve 2 askwhysomeR Latinidada “esthetics of Excess centers on agitate such as my discomfort with being compared to a Bratz doll, as they illu- inate the social and cultural stakes of Black and Latina embodiment and representation: the mockery and shaming of chonga girls; the harassment of masculine body presenting young Black and Latina women; the vilifica- tion of superstar rapper Nicki Minajs body as fake and plastic; and young, women’s reactions of repugnance and embarrassment at sexual images of women crafted by contemporary Black women artists Continually subject to oppression and marginalization, women of color have, as Stuart Hall writes about Black people in the diaspora, “used the ody —as ifitwas, andit often was, the only cultural capital wehad. We have ‘worked on ourselves asthe fanvases of representation Kug96, 473). Beyond, tracing the politics and cultufaTetfects of these often hostile responses, this book also reveals the power and potential that the visual economy of aes- thetic excess offers for contesting and reimagining formations of race, gen- er, class, and sexuality for Black and Latina w eit bodies." -d responses (Garcia Hernandez 2017), artwith and about ative Site ind Art Collide: WOTR a Whe Feminist artists and art historians have attested to the unwieldy and radical ‘ways that gitls encounter and read art, Tracey Emin claims that those who best understand her deeply personal explorations of sexuality and relation- ships are working-class teenage girls rather than art critics (Robinson 2006, 2), And Anna C. Chave has described how, when two teenage girls saw one of Donald Judd’ 1968 tloor box sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, they “strode over to this pristine work, kicked i, and laughed. Introduction / > tics of excessare entrenched theory are copro- crepant modes of cul make themselves that spark performat ese performances, they pass ~ of gender, race, class, sexuality, and other vectors of differ. ‘who participate in the project often have agitated responses played in worrr workshops, due to elements such as the velopa form of cultured good tas to probe what participants, instructors, and featured art ons in question. What would compel an he represent Mendieta, who was a young orphaned Cuban exile subjected to various rion in the U.S, to merge her nude body with the natural landscape and utilize animal blood as a medium? Might Wangechi cs of deformed women be critiques of the racial ideals ofthe forms of abuse and al irown 2014, 3s) theatrics in crafting the arguments of ind them as methods of theorizing, knowledge produc- ‘hioning innovated by ~ ‘Through worr, Ihave gained a nuanced understanding of how notions {gage in cultural production, as wi of their bodies and sexualities Jiami with images produced by contemporary vi age sexual bodies, such as Kara Walker ‘Mina, These are figures who are taught in woTR workshops or xed by project participants. Rather than disaggeegat talk about themselves and their readings of highlight how these narratives are enmeshed, i eplay between the sexual, racial, class, and gender discourses inmedia and whose work is cor ions, transformations, ne of Sexual nothing inherently excessive in the embodiment cess would be to measure these st and gendered inferiority to so-cal ndulgences-* For example, in “Ornament and Crime,” the 1908, treatise onthe role of style in modernism written by influential Viennese ar chitect Adolf Loos pleasure in elaborate aesthetic pracicesis framed as evi- y- Loos states, “Primitive man had to differentiate themselves by various colours, modern man wears athe lack of omamentisa sign of intellectual power Similarly, Le Corbusier, a French architect, tastemaks rary of Loos, disavowed aesthetic excess by forging a connection between hood consumption that were just emerging plains, “Le Corbusier Furope to the U.S. th ‘of Western att and design, ‘working class Black and Latina women and girls —whose elaborate embodiments situate them as the antithesis of high Ieerodaction / 9 style and therefore as sexual others, according to both modernist id clas. has obscrved how the Western construct of eg thetics has worked as am apparatus for making “att a8 valuable as sciencee jon of formalist judgments fashioned afer impe logics of value that dehumanized colonial-racial sub _ inspired by St an iterates, Stallings asserts that writer such le Hurston, who blur the boundaries between ethnography and “would distance thei forms and aesthetics away from singular in which objects could be easily commod. f OF an empire's wealth, ies made possible the survival ofa posthuma power, the representation of black bodies, and art making and cultural production enacted by WOTR artis ‘tural workers they engage and Latina body aesthetics as tasteful or normal, I plumb the discou of ornamental excess and the power of sexual aesthetics to ‘Gal and cultural ances they spark, and thus ifference are formed via contemporary visual e ture and. ent. Tattend to how Black and Latina women and gids tarry with these formations of difference and make art and pleasure out of. them Berenice A Alter al, the embodiments, conographies, and objects created by racial ized and colofized peoples are the canvases upon which Euro-American modernism articulated racted masks inspired by ‘museums in Paris, Adolf Loos's infamous Jose- attraction to poor and working-class Black and Latinx young men in New York City Malavé 2007). Aesthetics of excess are happens when these appr iy perceive excess as a negative, a 50 ame the excess engaged inthis book as abundance, as possessing more tha lue that Puerto Rican Osorio describe "They aunt yf dtference whe rasure of Back and Latinx bodies through mass in ation and other forms of social death As isa luxuries} they are also ‘and the powerto de {2012 21). Thisis why artist Kehinde Wiley poses young working-class Black men against floral baroque patterns and ornate gilded frames, why performer Celia Cruz wore spectacular gowns and wigs, why the late Chicana singer Selena bedazzled her bras with sequins and thinestones, and why my Puerto Rican grand- mother wore impeccable makeup and hair to work asa seamstressinanorth New Jersey sweatshoy admire one's elfimage, and potentially attract TetRe targets ofcommodineation, dismissal, and erasure—but they tend to spsctacu- slipping through such attempts at capture. Its how appropriation, caltu larly survive and morp! byt. This book takes up the qusering work performed by aesthetic Se ‘GpTEtting the dehumanizing formations of race, gender, lass, and sexuality st century United States as criminalized popula sand power through ther. tions express the Ietroduction / 18 p / nforced the binaries between the heterosexual and the queer at the expense of | tersecthonal understandings of how heteronormat | heterosexual people, Black and | forexample, embrace the "bi direct atory use of the term “que deployed to exclude struggles of race 1 a8 a signifier of sexual, gender, racial, and clas difference. Itis used throughout the text to describe both hetero. sexual and lesbian participants. For example, the WOTR artists I engage in chapter 3 selfidentify as gay, and I use that term in addition to queer to de- viewed asa more progres ‘way flinking them toa wider collectivity of homegrown sub /workin Bender race and sexual radials {Queer also describes how others view the Black and Latina artists Icen- Ler in the book as nonnocmative, whether they are understood to be bisex- laim queerness ina manner similar tohow! ‘propriate the discourse of excess asa productive force for Black and Latina girls and women. In so doing [follow Cohen, who proposes that the radi 1 of queer politics can be “located in its ability to create a space in opposition to dominant norms, a space where transformational politcal work can begin” (2013, 75). The book focuses on how various manifestations of queerness (sexual, gender, classed, racial) are embroiled inthe sociocul- tural power struggles mediated bya Aesthetics of excess can describe ticular mode ofexces exces” Toe sera et of excess. le range of phenomena. The par- study is what term “sexu: ic Sxgess asa concept for theorizing modes of dressand comportmeat that ae «ethnic, too young, too cheap, too loud (Hernandez 2005), Sexu: ‘excess identifies afield of visual perceptions, embodied performance ative practices, sociocultural discourses, a 12 / Introduction sociocultural value, sexual-aesthet rond indicating a hegemonic trope or normative gaze that mediates fe sans excess also sign tancesin which dies, both in the flesh and in representation, present field and expose the malleability of social norms querie, camp, voluptuousnes The agitating ad aciaiing force of senuahaethtic excess creme fied in a hyperbolically negative review of artist Kehinde Wiley’s work by im xd“ What to Make of Kehinde awkward quasi tongue-in-cheek/qu: ‘out to undermine what she believes highly successful, respected, and popular visual artist. ‘woman, rehearses the trope of the criminally hypersexual Black man in her argument that Wiley’s career has benefited from the art world turning a blind eye to his alleged sexual perversity. She writes, But look closer at the so-some objects—painting, sculpture, stained {ass—in “Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic,” and you'll see predatory behavior dressed up as art-historical affirmative action. Wiley’s targets are young people of color who in these pictures are gussied up in the jings of art history or Givenchy. Judging from Wiley's market and nal success —in his fifteen-year career, this he Brooklyn Museum—Wiley has pr tor seducing an art public cowed by ants exude is read by Dawson asthe result wang Blacks from the ghetto.” Jind the scenes may ow Black girls were treated by staff ata homeless ‘Aimee Meredith Cox descr s how the white woman ble workers (es. ex jeans were not only a personal affront but, she implied, symbolic of what As subjects who are marginalized and made vulnerable by their positions relative to race and gender, Black and Latina women and girls who embody wanting by both dominant (Cohen 2004, 29). Forexam- expressed by W. E.B. Da of young Black women in the early twentieth tury, which informshow Cox's contemporary participants are perceived, ‘bemoaned this tendency to excess the too much, the love of the : down-low, Negro-brown, more great and and fabulousness of ghetto ). The artists engaged in this book a Hartman (2019) poet which documents how imacy as they migrated to the urban centers of New of my icularly onthe ways in which ing, that express subjectivity and ‘embody ethnic on provide 3 means Tor expanding the Latina young women find that yw them to perform nomic success and self-love (see chapter ina’ plas reframe and reimagine Black women's embodiment by embs ipatory research with Black and ind young women, ling autoethnography, Ac ‘embodied by women and girls of color are creative practices that trouble sexual policing and reveal clas disparity. Since the bodies of women and gitls of color are routinely subj lance in public setings such as ind working-class neighborhoods, nce of what Pierre Bourdieu (19 : ance) an aversion that demarcates social boundaries.” Thea marked hypersexu: and girls takes the fall forthe class exclusions that cannot be acknowledged ina contemporary neoliberal context saturated with discourses of meritoc- racy and mobility. Ina n nal determined via vi -adings ofart and popular culture, jon, Deborah Paradee has noted “the unabashed ¥ and censure in everyday contexts. Aesthet Ieerabation discourses of respectal ‘shen clasifed as art or appes the coding of class difference inthe feminine ang employed by Black and Latinx women and gil tht red by the class, gender, and rail appropriations and transgresions captured in Pris s Burning (0990). The film documents drag competitions held by poor and workin, «lass queer and trans people of color in New York City in the 1986s, which ‘were organized around highly codified categories such as “butch queen" and “executive realnes.” The primary criterion that measured an effective performance in the ballroom circuit was the achievement of “realness”: body whose considerable crafting work in embodying a category could not ‘embodiments of the queer contestants involved would set the fashion me. tropolis of Parison fire with their fierce inventiveness. I understand Black vealing the class, genc the powers of sexual 18 Inroduction Jf high status among upper-! srlong,term life chances through spend- eaning and ) ‘The explanations advanced for these differences often how Black and Latinx populations, aware of how they are viewed in the ‘dominant imaginary as criminal outsiders, utilize consumption as a means sumption declines. Although these socioeconomic dynamics play a signifi lc practices of Black and Lat consumer and aestl studies that provide from an emphasis on visible consumabl The shit of clas poi 7 increae life chances tems fom the increasing influence ofa, ‘on socioeconomic life over the lat several decades. Neti 19708 and con. in the U.S. and beyond. They tment in government social welfng 1 of markets in the belie that people woul free markets, and fre ‘onits promise of engendering and nstead promotes particular forms ion of populations of color who are viewed as unproductive subjects that weaken the national economy. These «dynamics unfold viaa discourse which denies that racism exists (Martner , deportation, and mass inca hegemonic narratives about the puta- of overcoming one'sgiven economic circumstances and “sl Such a discourse is especially soften held to have no meaning at The mote rareed forms of status performance operative to- articular difficult to acknowledge class diferences, a ppear to hold liberal politica leanings, such as concern overthe ‘environment. ‘The decline in US-based manufacturing that economy and increased value for eu pervades gentriied spaces, such as the sli here people of color used to earn a living ae now | the markers of a new 20 | Introdaton vide for folks who cannot afford rent or a fve-dollar single-origin cold-brew coffee. Both industrial labor (inthe repurposed warehouse) and racialized urban struggle become packaged as marketal ceed or fail in p reflect their productivity. These bodily teadings are rooted inthe history of Latina women's racialization in the United States. Hazel Carby hhasanalyzed how young Black women became the targets of social panic in both white and Black communities in the early twentieth century follow- ing the Great Migration, due to discourses circulating about their proclivity for engaging in pr asa way to avoid hard work in more traditional kinds of obs. She argues that this discourse emerged from a fear ofthe new women foundin urban setting austerity was viewed as an expression of patriotism, youth who wore costly, flamboyant zoct suits made with copious amounts of fabric were perceived as immoral consumerist “participating in leisure citizens. By donning masculine zoot attire in addition 0 “up-dos, pencil thin eyebrows, and dark lips,” pachacas some of Hollywood's leading ladies of the Carol Lombard” (Ramitez 2005, 8). The pachuca’s performance of gen- tes a double bind for “They are expected to embody the desired sexual excess of boo, tyliciousness, yt this performance does not result in the promised pay, of heteronormatvity, Instead, embodying bootyliciousness more ofen punishes Black girls in the contexts of education, employment, and socal inthe contemporary neoliberal ‘These bodies are then policed forthe transgression ofex. ind Body {In producing knowledge about queer youth? Akt in Work in various capa Fenced series of upheavals caused by the departure ofthe museum's ong time executive director and board mem Artists are accustomed to work and I emphasize the subtlet ogues capture how they negotiate discourses of ace, gender, and 22 / Introduction ploxity ofthe charla asa research method and to the active roles assumed sin driving the discussion, notwithstanding my authoritative rructor/researcher sense of the ing 1 acknowledge them interlocutorsin the knowledge produc. on process. Together we make art, ideas, and conversations over Krispy Kreme doughnuts, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and sometimes tea and Bahamian coconut bread baked by my WOT colleague and friend Anya Wallace. sked worn arts (clothes acces 2). prompted therto [asked them to share their ideal embodiments with the group ifthey felt comfortable doing so. The index cards were meant to help the gits remem- ber the style they imagined whe ly, utilizing the index cards slowed down the process of responding, about the art and politics of Black and Latina embod they seeand make sense oftheir own bodi provided me witha document eon TY, smartphone, and When participants were finished with the index cards describ lives, Talk among the girls, and in my ts such as artworks, them questionslike, How would look saysabout youtoastean popular song, for are part ofthe wi Thad worked: year prior to our se five to twelve participa 24 / Introduction chaela | showed participants images of, as Nikki. Lee, who draw fom thet vung women of color, as wel ges of pop vi ‘who were inspirations for gi In the second part encouraged them to eit women isinthese works were Beingrepesetg ‘onthe meanings of race, gender, sexuality, and class articulated in the sage, and on whether the styles or products depicted were ones they woul, purchase and/or adopt. Most ofthe sinty-one participants ofthe chalas were between the agesep thirteen and seventeen. The youngest participant wasten years oli and th, oldest was thirty-one as several youth serving professionals partcipatedig the study alongside the girls and young women with whom they worked Eighteen participants identified as African American, and leven ideniieg lophone and Francophone Caribbean with references to coun such as Jamaica, Haiti, and the Bahamas. Twenty-five pai ‘not my aim to frame the insights oft = flecting how young women of color in Miami genes = body practice and representation. I work instead to situate the body narra tives produced inthe chara the girls. Their responses should not and could not be generalized, but the wealth of insights they presented contribute unique perspect rarely, ifever, been engaged in art history or femis calrace, nd queer studies. Chapter Overview workings of aesthetics of er ess. Chapter 2, “Sexual-Aesthetic Exces,” tracks the deviant figure 26 / Introduction k discourse, poy ‘The discourses of media, sal-asthetic of chonga production more broadly. torescarch on gender performance lackand Latina young women curred in oT regarding the embodiment of amasculine-body presenting photographic participant of the Black queer South African artist Zanele ‘Muholi, that the significations of trans embodiment contest the limits of both gender and aesthetic norms. Chapter 4, “Rococo Pink,” assesses the political potential of incarnat- ing fakery for women and girls ofcolor. I examine how the aesthetics ofthe ostentatious and hyperfeminine French rococo style has been mobilized 1ow/Salon. The chapter argues critique because they disturb notions of racial authenticity g respectability, and established hierarchies of race, class, gender, eauty and sexuality, "Through turning to a more exclusive focus on WOTR praxis and peda. sgogy, chapter s,"Encounters with Excess,” documents how engaging partic pantsin discussions about the sexual bodies iguredin the work ofsontempo- tary Black women artists have activated spaces for them to analyze, crite, and/or affirm: inart and pope Ww WOTR artists have responded f sn gaze upon women's bodies articulated an- ving, and expressed pleasure in crafting their artwork that explored sexual Tetrodetion / = e the pani 1 presented on M fection on that experience along with WOTK gla’ creative respon, lack women artists, provoke consideration ofthe at embraces sexual-aesthetic excess holds Potential, for open tion and pleasure encountering the egilogue applies the books argument to recent att wold dev] fami andin contemporary museum po xy ofhow the wor peo ion by both corporate and photo poem, inspired by the creative methods

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