Kerry James Marshall
(c)image: Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, NY, and Koplin Del Rio, CA
Wake, 2003
Wake (2003) consists of a cluster of images that deals with the transportation and transformation of Africans as a consequence of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Two Black Light photographs present two cargo vessels that took slaves from Africa to America. 20 round photographs pay homage to the first 20 Africans who came to be sold in the slave auctions at the Jamestown Settlement in 1619. One of them, a self-portrait of Marshall in his youth, is also included as a symbolic marker of the first African-American.
The work includes portraits of three black ballerinas. Ballet was long seen as not "fitting" for people of an African-American background. Indeed, it used to be commonly taken that the Black body was not suited for this dance form. Even today, a black presence in leading national ballet companies remains rather paltry. This said, ballet has indeed made inroads within the black community. As well as being the name for the religious commemorative ceremony for someone that has died, the title Wake also refers to this social transformation.