Object Details
Artist
Renée Cox
Date
1996
Medium
Five silver dye bleach prints, mounted on plywood
Dimensions
Image: 36 × 180 inches (91.4 × 457.2 cm)
Credit Line
Acquired through the African Acquisition Fund, a purchase fund established through the exchange of gifts from Mr. and Mrs. William W. Brill, and other donors
Object
Number
97.008 a-e
Trained both in film and photography, Renée Cox has been creating controversy since the early 1990s(…)
Trained both in film and photography, Renée Cox has been creating controversy since the early 1990s. Committed to celebrating black womanhood and criticizing racism and sexism, she has used her work to make social critiques on a range of subjects, from institutionalized religion to motherhood. Yo Mama’s Last Supper is part of a body of work, Committed, in which Cox appropriated European religious masterpieces and repopulated them with black figures. Here she remade Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper with herself portraying a nude Jesus surrounded by black disciples—except for Judas, who is white. The artist commented, “Christianity is big in the African American community but there are no representations of us. I took it upon myself to include people of color in these classic scenarios.” (“Staged, Performed, Manipulated,” curated by Andrea Inselmann and presented at the Johnson Museum January 24–June 7, 2015)
