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Fe Noel

Oshun Slip Dress
Now On View

Maker

Fe Noel, design label
Felisha &quot
Fe&quot

Title

Oshun Slip Dress

Year

2019

Medium

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

Dimensions

Size: Small

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Edgar J. Lownes Fund

Object Number

2019.30

Type

Publications

  • Journal

Manual / Issue 14: Shadows

The RISD Museum’s fourteenth issue of Manual shines a light on the shadow, centering the black body as a site of possibility, liberatory self-awareness, radical non-conformity, and joyful defiance. This issue serves as a companion to the exhibition Defying the Shadow.

Manual 14: Shadows opens with an excerpt on the shadow from W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, followed by an introduction by Dr. Anita N. Bateman, who elucidates: “Operating in the shadow comes with a legacy of resistance, both in spiritual and ideological forms.”

Exhibition History

Art and Design from 1900 to Now
Jun 04, 2022 – Dec 01, 2030

Label copy

According to designer Felisha Noel, this dress celebrates “the strength and regal nature of black women.” Having grown up in a circle of strong West Indian women, Noel was immediately drawn to the work of Afro-Cuban American artist Harmonia Rosales, known for challenging Eurocentric narratives by replacing the white figures in historical artworks with Black women. A reference to the Italian Renaissance work Birth of Venus, Rosales’s painting—digitally printed here on gauzy silk— reimagines the subject as Oshun, a goddess in the Santeria religion, her dark skin flecked with gold.

–Kate Irvin, curator of costume and textiles

Image use

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Public Domain This object is in the Public Domain and available under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

Tombstone

Fe Noel, design label
Felisha "Fe" Noel (Grenadian-American, b. 1987), designer
Harmonia Rosales (Afro-Cuban American, b. 1984), painter
Oshun Slip Dress, 2019
Digitally printed silk plain weave with polyester plain-weave trim
Size: Small
Edgar J. Lownes Fund 2019.30

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