ARTS
The fantastic and divine art of Shanequa Gay Gay grew up in a deeply religious household cloaked by belief (her mother is a pastor), and while she doesn’t untie herself from her Christian background, she has given herself permission to ask questions in a way that she was not allowed to as a child. The elements of fantasy that arise in Gay’s work highlight a disparity in popular culture: the lack of portrayals of Black women as protagonists, especially in fantasy and futuristic worlds. “The only time I ever saw women who look like me in space travel was ‘Star Trek,’” said Gay. “Very rarely are we centered, so I wondered, what does that look like?” In essence, these works that cross between realism in the depictions of female form, recognizable representations of the African American and specifically southern Black experience, animal iconography, and bold, graphic design elements, constitute an on-going conversation that Gay has with herself. At times
“the unnameable, unspeakable divine ascension”
BY ISADORA PENNINGTON What does fantasy look like from the perspective of a strong, confident, southern Black woman? That’s just one of the questions that multimedia artist Shanequa Gay asks with her work. Inspired by her family history and African American traditions, Gay embraces a sense of play when conceptualizing her colorful works. Using a range of materials that include oil paints, acrylics, photographs, watercolors, fabric, spray paint, vinyl, and even hair weave, she crafts figural works that pose openended questions and entice the viewer to consider their own perceptions. Hybridity is a theme that Gay explored in her work for more than a decade. Her first body of work that involved hybridity was called “The Fair Game Project” and dealt with social issues surrounding the African American male body. Ultimately, Gay began experiencing outrage fatigue and moved away from the theme, though she never abandoned the concepts behind the work. Later,
16 FEBRUARY 2022 | REPORTER NEWSPAPERS
when pursuing her MFA from Georgia State University, she found herself reevaluating the work she produces. “Hybridity wasn’t something I wanted to let go,” she said, and she found ways to explore that theme in new ways. Gay’s current body of work features Black women’s bodies topped with otherworldly animal heads often in celestial settings. She explained that by combining two figures that are sometimes villainized in popular culture to create whimsical and wise characters she was able to grant them an ethereal majesty. “I began to develop these figures called the ‘devouts’ by kind of pulling from the women in my family and ancestors and those who are living: my mom, my grandmother, my aunts,” Gay continued. “They all have these characteristics of strength, of elegance, and of beauty.” The animals she chose also exhibit those same virtues, and by uniting them she magnifies their significance. “Currently they have these kind of gazing ancestral eyes, and all sorts of tropes of what it means to me to be African Atlantan,” said Gay.
Gay is also inspired by a conversation between Gloria Steinem and bell hooks in which Steinem talked about how, over the course of 3,000 years, Egyptians began to take divinity away from women and animals. Hooks then talked about how African Americans cannot ever truly decolonize their minds if they can’t imagine themselves as divine. Gay’s portrait subjects have a majestic air about them, observing, celebrating, and uplifting icons of Blackness. She wants to grant women and girl-child figures a “language of divinity” as well as celebrate native animals. reporternewspapers.com DUN
