Woman Who Won the Battle to Free Her Soul

by Aberjhani

Title

Woman Who Won the Battle to Free Her Soul

Artist

Aberjhani

Medium

Mixed Media - Digital Painting - Mixed Media

Description

One of the driving aesthetic philosophies behind the Harlem Renaissance was a rediscovery and reinterpretation of African History and culture. After being conditioned to believe their African ancestry consisted of nothing but mindless savagery, African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance (1920s, 1930s, 1940s) began noting how works by celebrated European artists like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse sometimes drew heavily on African art, especially that in West Coast countries like Gabon, Ghana, and Nigeria.

African Americans, still battling against American apartheid, began to realize the richness of their culture and history went back much further than the enslavement of their parents or grandparents in the United States. Consequently, this revelation began showing up in the art of painters and sculptors, like Aaron Douglas and Lois Mailou Jones, of the Harlem Renaissance.

My own work seen here, "Woman Who Won the Battle to Free Her Soul," and the canvas titled "Woman Whose Dreams Kept Hope Alive," are acknowledgments of the Harlem Renaissance tradition of reclaiming and reinterpreting African ancestry. They are modeled after West African Coast sculpture and masks. I chose an abstract representation rather than a more literal concrete one because of the psychic and spiritual struggles indicated by the themes. These digital paintings also stand as tributes to the women and men who made the Year 2018's #MeToo Movement too powerful to be ignored, just as suffragettes during the Harlem Renaissance accomplished the same feat.

Aberjhani
Harlem Renaissance Centennial
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Uploaded

November 1st, 2018

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