Intruder

In Intruder, an African American woman is pressed uncomfortably into the foreground of a grand interior. With its expensive furnishings and exaggerated proportions, the palatial room signals a pretentious, whites-only realm of status and wealth. Benny Andrews’ combination of painted and collaged materials accentuates the sense that the woman is out of place. The blue chair and details of the room are in oil, but the woman’s head is roughly sculpted paper and her dress is painted fabric. Created one year after Martin Luther King, Jr. led the March on Washington and appealed to Congress for civil rights legislation, the work grapples with the social upheavals of the period.

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