2022 Retold | Stephanie Santana

STEPHANIE SANTANA

Studio artist; founding member of Black Women of Print; recent exhibition: A Contemporary Black Matriarchal Lineage in Printmaking at Highpoint Center of Printmaking (Minneapolis); collections: Metropolitan Museum (NYC), Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles), Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Smith College Museum of Art (MA)

Lasting Truth

Screen print appliqué on hand-painted textile, cotton batting, machine quilting, hand embroidery
42.5H x 30W inches
2022

In the foreword of her 1973 novel Sula, Toni Morrison states, “Cut adrift, so to speak, we found it possible to think up things, try things, explore. Use what was known and tried and investigate what was not… …Nobody minded us, so we minded ourselves. In that atmosphere of ‘What would you be doing or thinking if there was no gaze or hand to stop you?’ I began to think about just what that kind of license would have been for us black women…” (Morrison pp. xiv – xv)

What Kind of Freedom and Lasting Truth are self-portrait textiles that consider both the possibilities and supposed limitations of Black girlhood, as well as what Octavia Butler referred to in her novel Parable of the Sower as the “lasting truth” of change (“All that you touch, you Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.” Butler p. 3). Incorporating archival photographs of the artist, these quilted works investigate the foundations upon which we build our sense of home and self.

References:
Morrison, Toni. Sula. First Vintage International Edition, June 2004. pp. xiv – xv
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Grand Central Publishing Edition, 1993. p.3

What Kind of Freedom

Screen print appliqué on hand-painted textile, cotton batting, machine quilting, hand embroidery
42.5H x 30W inches
2022

To inquire about the artists or work in the exhibition please email gallery@penland.org or call 828.765.6211