ABSTRACT
Some contemporary artists in the U.S. have been hashing out these issues in the 1980s and '90S. Lorraine 0' Grady is one of them. She originally titled her photomontage diptych The Clearing in 1991; however, later, she lengthened the title to The Clearing: or Cortez and La Malinche, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, N. and Me to clarify the historical and personal relevance of the work (fig. 22.2). The left half of the piece presents the relationship between the black woman and white man as loving while the right as malevolent. The skeletal face of the man and the gun on the pile of clothing provide elements of violence and death. Yet O'Grady says, "It isn't a 'before/after' piece; it's a 'both/and' piece. This couple is on the wall in the simultaneous extremes of ecstasy and exploitation."4 The
Figure 22. 1 Tiger Woods Billboard, 1999, photo by Michelle Tomszewski.
