Howardena Pindell is an artist whose work addresses issues of racism and sexism. In the 1970s, Pindell began using a lengthy process of making conceptual art by destructing and reconstructing various materials, such as hole punching paper or cutting and sewing canvases together that were then painted, drawn on, or adorned with glitter and perfumes. In Untitled #1, layers of hole-punched paper dots with painted arrows are glued onto canvas. The circular dot is a significant image for Pindell. She can recall an event during the 1950s when she was in Kentucky and had to drink from a cup with a red circle label that signaled to a racially segregated society that a Black person drank from the cup. According to Pindell in a 2014 interview with ARTnews: “I realized that’s really the origin story of my being driven to try to change the circle in my mind trying to take the sting out of that.”

Title: Untitled 1
Artist: Howardena Pindell (b. 1943)
Date: 1975
Medium: paper, thread, ink on board
Dimensions: Image: 15 x 15 inches; Framed in plexi box: 20 3/8 x 20 3/8 inches
Accession Number: H77.56.02
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