Willie Cole’s evocative Five Beauties Rising is a set of five intaglio prints on paper depicting battered, broken, and discarded ironing boards, each with a woman’s name printed in capital letters below the image: Savannah, Dot, Fannie Mae, Queen, and Anna Mae. By bestowing a human name on an inanimate object, Cole invites the viewer to contemplate whether these images of damaged boards are a memorial to the women who used them, figurative representations of the women themselves, or both. The object’s museum label reveals these images are a “testament to the strength and endurance of generations of Black women” and a “tribute to the manual labor they have performed,” while also leaving room for audiences to impart their own understandings, whether “tombstones, human silhouettes or portraits. . .slave ships,” or something else entirely (Object Label).
By selecting an object as seemingly mundane as an ironing board and imbuing it with human attributes such as a name and blemishes resembling scars, Cole draws a connection between the grueling domestic work done by women past and present. By bestowing the prints with his Black family’s names, Cole further connects these tumultuous images with Black history in particular. These images are simultaneously timeless and laden with history, calling to mind the brutal histories of slavery and colonialism across the globe that still resonate today. The lasting effects of these abuses and back-breaking manual labor take a toll on the body and soul, as well as the shared communal psyche that persists into the future.
These images are currently decontextualized in their placement among other new acquisitions at the Harvard Art Museums, with no other similar objects placed in conversation near them. Relocating this set of prints from the Harvard Art Museums to either a historic house museum or an ethnographic institution with a collection of domestic housewares such as ironing boards and irons would add a new layer of meaning, juxtaposing seemingly static historic objects with the very real effects of the labor required to use them that are still deeply felt in the present day. The impact of these images and the labor, trauma, and strength they represent is a stark reminder that real humans used these objects we associate with the past, even if their names are not directly recorded or remembered or shared as part of the object’s history.
Appendix
Willie Cole. Five Beauties Rising. 2012. Intaglio and relief on paper. In exhibition “Future Minded: New Works in the Collection” at Harvard Art Museums, Boston, MA. Seen on 2 Mar. 2024.
Works Cited
Object Label for Five Beauties Rising, 2012 by Willie Cole. In exhibition “Future Minded: New Works in the Collection” at Harvard Art Museums, Boston, MA. Seen on: 2 March 2024.
Originally written March 2024.
Art with an Opinion 