Betye Saar

Betye Saar... Black Girl's Window (1969, mixed media assemblage). From Betye Saar at the Arts Conservations Archive. Also... Betye Saar: Migrations/Transformations at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in New York, NY. "...In seventeen mixed media collages and assemblages, Saar narrates seventeen distinctive journeys. By layering carefully selected clues - a gold button, an African mask, a slave ship diagram, a weathered photograph, a pressed leaf, a tattered American flag - she constructs fictional biographies of nameless characters that represent the historical passages of millions. Haunted by memories of Africa or the trauma of the Middle Passage, Saar's journeys remind us that history is not simply the recording of past events - it is a living, breathing entity, filling the space of our present and shaping contemporary identities."