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Since 1988, Willie Cole has repeatedly returned to the iron to conjure multiple meanings and associations. His technique consists of scorching a raw canvas with a steam iron until the surface starts to burn. The iron imagery suggests domestic labor and traditional femininity, perhaps honoring his mother’s and grandmother’s work as housekeepers. The scorched marks also speak to painful aspects of African American history. The hull-like shape recalls images of slave ships packed tightly with human cargo, and the burnt surface suggests the way slave owners sometimes branded the enslaved. Charred bits of the canvas seem to fall away like the identities of those individuals.

2011.5.1