ABSTRACT
Working to bear witness to the untold stories of sacrifice and suffering endured by millions of enslaved people, early African American artists such as Drake refused to dilute or dismiss the traumatizing realities that had been enacted in the “prison-house of bondage” by barbaric and murderous white slaveholding classes. Clementine Hunter and Sam Doyle artists reimagine the life stories of unknown enslaved individuals in order to put flesh onto the bones of hidden histories of African American and African diasporic genealogies of rebellion and revolution. Hunter includes one black woman who is engaged in a very different kind of labor in Cotton Picking. A surrogate for Hunter herself, she is seated rather than bent double and she holds a paintbrush in her hand while she works away at a canvas resting on her lap. An emotionally expressionistic rather than a literal or realistic work, Hunter visualizes her internal processes as an artist.
