{"id":9352,"date":"2021-03-25T02:24:31","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T02:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/media-archive.blackartinamerica.com\/?p=9352"},"modified":"2021-03-25T02:26:54","modified_gmt":"2021-03-25T02:26:54","slug":"renee-stout-working-with-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=9352","title":{"rendered":"Renee Stout: Working with Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Renee Stout: Working with Spirit<\/span><\/h2>\n
By Shantay Robinson\u00a0<\/span><\/pre>\n
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Renee Stout is a narrative artist who uses a variety of media to tell an ongoing story of living life as an African American woman in a culture that has roadblocks set up to keep them from thriving. Though Stout has been a practicing artist for more than thirty years, she continues to work despite not receiving the acclaim of less seasoned and newly minted artists in the field. Stout is the winner of the 2010 David C. Driskell Prize, which is an honor and recognition from a person whom she greatly respects. When the High Museum called her about the prize, she was working as she normally does without knowing if the world was noticing her work. \u201cSo, I\u2019m quietly doing my work,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not like I\u2019m showing in New York. I don\u2019t have that visibility, so you wonder do people even know you exist sometimes. But that\u2019s not going to stop me from working. I work not because someone\u2019s looking. When you get a prize and somebody calls you up from the High Museum and tells you that you\u2019ve won the prize, it lets you know that even when you don\u2019t think somebody\u2019s looking, somebody\u2019s looking.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
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Renee Stout – Fetish #2<\/p><\/div>\n
Stout was initially introduced to African-based spirituality when she was a young girl attending Saturday morning art classes at Carnegie Museum. When she was escorted through the building to view artifacts in the African culture section of the museum, she encountered an African power figure that had nails driven into it. \u201cI found it fascinating and it really stuck in my head,\u201d she says. She didn\u2019t know what it was and there wasn\u2019t much text about it on the wall placard. She went on to study painting at Carnegie Mellon, and she never lost interest in African art. When she moved to Washington D.C. in 1985, she started to visit the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and made the connection to the power figure at the Carnegie she encountered when she was young to the art at the Smithsonian. There, she found extensive information about the artworks, which piqued her interest. So, she started reading about African art, philosophy, and spirituality.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Her work focuses on African spirituality and is steeped in a Black aesthetic. \u201cAnybody who looks at my work can see where it\u2019s coming from in the subject matter\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m doing what I do out of who I am and the experiences I have and that\u2019s what\u2019s reflected in the work.\u201d She confesses her work is not easily marketable, so the art market is a challenge. She\u2019s not a mainstream artist and likens the art market to <\/span>American Idol<\/span><\/i> where artists are now required to be the whole package with good looks and the right story. She believes the art market no longer encourages longevity and dedication to your craft. Because she\u2019s self-driven, she doesn\u2019t question her longevity. \u201cI\u2019m unapologetically dealing with the subjects that I\u2019m dealing with like African spirituality. The art market doesn\u2019t have a framework to understand. It\u2019s because we live in a white dominated Christian society that doesn\u2019t understand what I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
She says, \u201cI don\u2019t have the representation I need because nobody really knows how to represent what I\u2019m doing.\u201d She\u2019s not trying to replicate authentic hoodoo relics. Her sculptures, paintings, and drawings are informed by her studies in African-based spiritual systems that guide her creation of power objects – because hoodoo is what you make it. For example, her drawing <\/span>Blood Bottle<\/span><\/i> could be seen as a power object she created after witnessing a woman bleeding to death outside of her home. One day in her neighborhood, in the early morning, there was commotion outside. When she looked, there was a woman lying wounded in the gutter. Two Latino men communicated to her to call the police. After a day of a blocked off street and speaking to the police about what she knew, Stout created <\/span>Blood Bottle.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n
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Renee Stout – Blood Bottle<\/p><\/div>\n
Her work is not meant to be understood immediately. She likens herself to Toni Morrison whose work requires time to get to know. \u201cWhen I approach my work, I approach it on multiple levels. First of all, I have something I want to say. Then my work is filled with a lot of symbolism and lots of metaphors.\u201d She observes that people don\u2019t want to work too hard to understand a painting. Interestingly, the ease of understanding an artwork might account for the success of portraiture when it comes to Black artists and the white art world. But in order to understand Stout, there needs to be some understanding of African-based spiritual practices. She says, \u201cThey want to get it right away. That\u2019s not the way I am.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Stout offers that she\u2019s the kind of artist people will probably finally get or catch up to when she\u2019s in her 90s or gone. While the white art market is looking for easily accessible artwork, Black women might catch on to Stout sooner than later. In a search on YouTube for \u201cBlack women spirituality,\u201d many videos of Black women speaking about African spirituality and manifesting populate. It might not be long until a legion of Black women come to know African-based spiritual systems and form a true connection to Stout\u2019s work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, what I envision is that one day every African American woke up and said okay I\u2019m done with Christianity, I\u2019m going to start believing in the beliefs of my ancestors. I\u2019m going to revisit the belief systems and ways of looking at the universe and that kind of thing, I think the whole power balance would change.\u201d\u00a0 Stout believes African-based spiritual practices can help Black people overstep the roadblocks the culture sets up. \u201cWe have to start seeing ourselves differently,\u201d she offers. \u201cOne of the ways I believe we can do that is embracing our own spirituality \u2013 the spirituality of our ancestors because as long as in the back of our minds there is a white Jesus, I don\u2019t know how far you can get with that.\u201d She understands the controversial nature of her beliefs because, in the Black community, Hoodoo, Voodoo, Santeria, and the like are typically taboo. With a recent interest and acknowledgment of African-based spirituality by Black women, her goal of getting African American viewers to question their spirituality could be near.<\/span><\/p>\n
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Renee Stout – The Perfect Reading<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cAs a woman, as an African American, I totally rejected Christianity because I don\u2019t believe it\u2019s in line with the person who I am growing to be or the woman I want to be. I can\u2019t deal with a belief system that subjugates women. I\u2019m not going to deal with that.\u201d With the reemergence of feminism, Stout\u2019s inculcation of African-based spiritual systems as equitable to women could be a draw for many Black women to look closely at her art, but more importantly to look at a spiritual system that empowers them. She admits that in order for her to transcend boundaries and barriers, she has to be grounded in a belief system that allows her to wake up every day and say that she believes in herself. \u201cLooking at Diasporic Religions that have their seeds in African belief systems are the thing that ground me. And that\u2019s why I have to do it,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Although Stout\u2019s story is not dissimilar to many working artists who are dedicated to the longevity of their art careers, her success has yet to reach its peak. With the proliferation of books on Amazon and videos on YouTube about African-based spirituality, Black women are discovering the power of their ancestors\u2019 belief systems, systems that brought them through some of the most horrendous times in human history. Stout\u2019s purpose for art, to communicate what is going on her mind, is likely to connect to viewers who will understand the gravity of her work sooner than later. \u201cSo, if you ask me why I make art. I don\u2019t know. I do it because I have to,\u201d she says. Her drive to make art, makes available a body of work that we can refer to when we come to terms with African-based spirituality and finally understand the power inherent in it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Like most artists, Stout feels compelled to communicate what she\u2019s created inside of her. \u201cIf you see something you want to share that vision that\u2019s in your head. And so, you make art, you tell a story, you play a song. It comes from inside you. What I\u2019m noticing is strangely a lot of younger artists seem to be driven by what\u2019s outside of them more than what\u2019s inside.\u201d Stout creates art because it\u2019s like eating or sleeping. She has to do it. She\u2019s not interested in being famous or an art star. She does it whether no one is looking. She\u2019s just compelled to make art. As soon as she realized she was committed to making art, she never looked back.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what I do. That\u2019s my story,\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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\"\"SHANTAY ROBINSON<\/b>\u00a0was a participant in the inaugural class of\u00a0Burnaway<\/i>\u00a0Magazine\u2019s\u00a0Art Writers Mentorship Program, a fellow in Duke University\u2019s Center for Documentary Studies Digital Publishing Project\u00a0Editorial Fellowship and was chosen for the CUE Art Foundation\u2019s Art Critic Mentoring program. In addition to writing for\u00a0Black Art in America<\/i>, she has written for\u00a0Washington City Paper,<\/i>\u00a0ArtsATL<\/i>,\u00a0Nashville\u00a0<\/i>Scene,\u00a0ARTS.BLACK<\/i>,\u00a0AFROPUNK<\/i>,\u00a0Sugarcane Magazine,<\/i>\u00a0Number, Inc<\/i>., and\u00a0International Review of African American Art.<\/i>\u00a0She also published a scholarly article in\u00a0Teaching Artist Journal.\u00a0<\/i>She presented papers about art and education at SCAD\u2019s (Savannah College of Art and Design) Symposium on Art and Fashion, Georgia State University\u2019s New Voices Graduate Student Conference, Georgia State University\u2019s Glorious Hair and Academic Identities Conference, Northeast Modern Languages Association Conference, Mason Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference, and New York African Studies Association Conference. In 2019, she sat on a panel at Prizm Art Fair during Miami Art Week. In 2020, she served as visual arts judge in Shreveport Regional Council\u2019s Critical Mass 8 Art Competition.<\/p>\n
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