Simone Leigh

Interpretation

Opuwo, named after a town in Namibia, presents the ceramic head of a woman whose absent eyes prompt considerations of the power of seeing-and of being seen and recognized. Her hair is styled in a puff made up of small porcelain roses, and her conical raffia skirt references the huts and skirts of the Herero, an ethnic group in Namibia and Angola. Between 1904 and 1907, German colonizers killed tens of thousands of Herero and Nama people in what is now considered the first genocide campaign of the 20th century. Leigh describes her sculptures as representing women “who, for whatever reasons, have been left out of the archive or left out of history.”

Acquisition details

This work was acquired in recognition of Leigh’s brief but significant teaching experience in RISD’s Ceramics Department and her increasing stature as one of the most celebrated artists working today. The purchase was made using the Mary B. Jackson Fund, the origins and intent of which were first articulated in the Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design from October 1926:

THE JACKSON BEQUEST. The Museum has been advised that, under the will of the late Benjamin M. Jackson, it was to receive certain of his choice pieces of furniture, and shared with Brown University and the Rhode Island Hospital the considerable estate which he left. There were some minor bequests, but the income of the funds which later will be available is to be used ”for the purchase of such works of art as the properly authorized representatives or committee may find desirable for the use of said Rhode Island School of Design.“ This fund is to be known as ”The Mary Bixby Jackson Fund.“ As the choice works of art are added year by year, it will be increasingly evident that Mr. Jackson made [the] extremely wise provision that his interest should be continued after his death. By such broad-minded consideration have museums in America reached their present state of development, and only by others following his example may the larger and more useful collections of the future be acquired.

-Dominic Molon, Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art