Tar Baby Jane
presented by Greg Scott Williams, Jr.
A review by Mad Matthewz:
Tar
Baby Jane is a short portrait documentary about sculptor and performance
artist, Vanessa German. The film focuses on Ms. German's simultaneous
preparations for an upcoming gallery exhibition and a production of her one
woman show, Root, at the African-American Festival of Theater and Music
in Martha's Vineyard.
As a
subject, Ms. German's life is in no short supply of dramatic narratives - an
extremely talented, black lesbian artist struggling to keep a roof over her
head and quite literally to maintain her sanity (she suffers from mental
illness including bouts of depression that have brought her to the brink of
suicide.) But despite such overwhelming adversity, it is her magnetism as a
performer that resonates most throughout the film. Her booming monologues are
lyrical and soulful as the blues, painting vivid portraits of the downtrodden
and oft forgotten folks.
Her
sculptures provide an ironic counterpoint to her performance piece - she
constructs ornate black dolls out of papier mache, plaster and a variety of
found objects that are beautiful, sad and whimsical all at once. They speak
volumes without saying a word. At a single glance, Ms. German's "tar
babies" conjure up hundreds of years of oppression and directly confront
and challenge long-standing Eurocentric ideals of beauty. Each sculpture
practically cries out for our love, understanding and acceptance despite their
stoic countenances.
There
is a profound symmetry in Ms. German's work as a sculptor and performer - both
discplines manifesting in a sort of soul hollering, beseeching the viewer to
recognize America's shameful legacy of slavery, brutality and injustice, to
stare it right in the face, to acknowledge the complicit nature of our
relationship as oppressors and oppressed and hopefully to embrace ourselves and
one another for the sake of a shared future.
Saturday, December 15 6:30p
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