Artists on Native, African, and African American Stereotypes

Historical Narratives

Stereotypes often take the form of elaborate historical narrative stories we tell ourselves about the past. Misconceptions and perversions become history; history becomes romanticized or distorted. The roles that the marginalized have played in the grand narratives of history are often absent, diminished, or ill-conceived. Africans, Native Americans, and African Americans have all been the subject of historical constructs that are based on stereotypes employed for social control in the past and continue to impact their social and political lives today.

Cindee Bouge, Bobblehead doll in the form of “Mammy” 2000-2007

Mary Sibande, Sophie–Merica, 2009

Betye Saar, Let Me Entertain You, 1972

Cindee Bouge, Bobblehead doll in the form of “Mammy” 2000-2007

Mary Sibande, b. 1982, South Africa, Sophie–Merica, 2009, Mixed-media installation, 74 x 120 in. (188 x 304.8 cm), National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, museum purchase, 2015-10-1

Mary Sibande’s Sophie–Merica addresses challenges of race, labor, and representation in post-apartheid South Africa, particularly through the lens of the black female domestic worker. Informed by the lives of Sibande’s mother and grandmother, both domestic workers, Sophie– Merica blends fantasy and reality, high art, and handicraft in the form of a female maid. With closed eyes, Sophie dreams of life beyond domestic labor. Her blue ordinary uniform expands to a Cinderella-like volume, transforming the garments of drudgery into a fantasy ball gown. Through a series of life-size sculptures, Sibande presents the elaborate imaginings of splendor, beauty, and power that emanate from behind Sophie’s impassive face. Her sculpted, smooth polished black skin suggests presence and absence, silence and impenetrability. Through body and dress, Sibande constructs the black female figure as a formidable “sight of memory” that articulates its continuous endurance of “unspeakable things” in unspoken ways. Sophie’s body and dress are the vehicles through which histories and stereotypes of black female labor are transformed through reverie and fantasy.

Mary Sibande, Sophie–Merica, 2009
Mary Sibande, b. 1982, South Africa, Sophie–Merica, 2009, Mixed-media installation, 74 x 120 in. (188 x 304.8 cm), National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, museum purchase, 2015-10-1

Betye Saar, b. 1926, Los Angeles, California, Let Me Entertain You, 1972, Assemblage window, National Museum of African American History and Culture

African American artist Betye Saar was one of the earliest black artists to engage racist stereotypes, using characters such as the Mammy and the black minstrel to highlight imposed identities that are ingrained in the American cultural memory and consistently deployed against African Americans as a means of degradation and control. Let Me Entertain You, a mixed-media assemblage from 1972, employs the trope of the black minstrel, the pervasive stereotype of the black male entertainer who played the simple–minded comic buffoon. Yet Saar’s entertainer morphs from the typical image of the banjo-playing minstrel to an overlay of a horrific lynching scene and finally to a black militant holding a rifle. Saar suggests that even black minstrelsy was a form of survival that was, in effect, an act of resistance.⁶

Robert Lee MacCameron, Two Negro Musicians, n.d. Robert Lee MacCameron Two Negro Musicians, n.d.,
Oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum

⁶ Jane Carpenter and Betye Saar, Betye Saar, (Petaluma, Calif.: Pomegranate, 2003), 46.

Cindee Bouge, Bobblehead doll in the form of “Mammy” 2000-2007, Papier mâché, metal and glass, 10 1/4 x 3 3/4 x 4 7/8 in. (26 x 9.5 x 12.4 cm), Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of the Collection of James M. Caselli and Jonathan Mark Scharer, © Cindee Bouge

Representing the age-old American stereotype of the black Mammy, American artist Cindee Bouge combines kitsch with stereotype in her bobblehead doll in the form of Mammy. The Mammy figure is part of American southern lore that romanticizes the plantation past. The rotund servant with a headwrap known as “Mammy” was an enslaved caretaker and cook for white families and children. Bouge’s sculpture recalls the Mammy figurine—a popular form of Americana that domesticates this powerful stereotype of black American womanhood. Bouge’s sculpture is part of a collection of black memorabilia amassed by the National African American History and Culture Museum. Individuals and institutions collect historically offensive stereotypical material as a form of resistance against the narratives of racism that these objects embody. Even an innocuous portrait, such as the 1925 Mary and Mammy by American artist Sarah Eakin Cowan that depicts an African American woman posing with a young white child, reinforces myths of the old south and naturalizes the role of the black Mammy. Collecting and engaging objects that reflect this difficult history help to neutralize their power.

Sarah Eakin Cowan, Mary and Mammy, 1925
Sarah Eakin Cowan, Mary and Mammy, 1925, Miniature watercolor on ivory, Smithsonian American Art Museum