Angela Davis Johnson has created an art project that seeks to give a name to missing African American women. She started with a painting of a woman from Pine Bluff who has been missing for a time. Then she herself was lost in New Orleans — and no one would help her find her way — and the idea of missing, nameless women, like those kidnapped by Boko Haram and others, made her think. They need humanizing, they need to be recognized as sisters, daughters, mothers.
And so Johnson created “When the Sun and the Moon Stood Still, I Witnessed: Making Missing Women of Color Visible Through Art,” which she took to Mosaic Templars and the House of Art today and will on Friday bring to Pulaski Technical College at 11 a.m. and the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at 1 p.m.
I got to talk to Johnson at the Butler Center at last week’s 2nd Friday after-hours art event and I can tell you that you will find her talk and work fascinating. Her work is both intellectual and heartfelt.
You’ll see in the image above pieces of paper with missing women’s names forming a necklace on Johnson’s representation of the Pine Bluff woman (taken with my iphone; sorry about the quality).