Betye Saar is one of the most important artists of our time. Her transformative oeuvre explores and memorializes Black life and women's work, as well as challenges canonical categories and the white gaze. Her prescient language of assemblage deconstructs and reimagines ideas and objects, making space for and giving permission to three generations of Los Angeles artists to embrace the convergences of aesthetics with racial identity, mysticism, gender and culturally relevant themes.
My friendship with Betye Saar began after a public conversation we had at the California African American Museum in 2006. Since then, we have collaborated, traveled together, hunted and gathered, and discovered our shared interests in family, history, gardening and encouraging artists to create work that builds powerful visual literacy for their communities.
Mojo Rising celebrates her near 50-year relationship with Cal State LA, that mounted her first survey exhibition in 1973. It also demonstrates the extent of Saar's influence and the roots she has cultivated for her daughters, grandchildren, students and every artist who encounters her work. The artists included here represent a small selection of those who benefit from her wisdom, creativity, generosity and the experience of living Betye Saar's hometown.
This exhibition showcases Betye Saar's work and the visual dialogue other artists have with her. The confluences are evident in intention, in recycling found objects, imbuing common materials with mystic meaning, using sacred geometry, and honoring the ancestors (recent and long past) with work that speak to both aesthetics and narratives that must be told and shared.
jill moniz, phd
principal, Quotidian
