Black Art- Featured in Black Art.
Amy Sherald in “Black Art: In the Absence of Light (2021)”
A few weeks back a friend notified me that a sweatshirt that I printed for Contemporary Art Museum made a slight cameo appearance in HBO Max’s “Black Art: In the Absence of Light (2021)”. I was a little confused on the “who”, “why” and “how” so I decided to take a gander for myself. What I found (starting around the 38:38min mark) was that Amy Sherald is, in fact, wearing CAM’s black on black St Louis Sweatshirt.
Amy Sherald is an American artist that is renown for creating the official portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama as well as The Bathers Portrait of Breonna Taylor. She studied at Clark Atlanta University and later at Maryland Institute College of Art and paints in a style of simplified realism. The “Black Art” documentary highlights the intersection of Black artists’ role in American History and their position in occupying space within American Art History; and Sherald’s appearance (one of many Black artists featured in the film) details, shapes, and helps weave Black people’s artistry into the overall scope of American Culture.
The sort of underhanded irony that I find in this story is actually multilayered. Not only is Sherald wearing a piece printed by a Black owned business in Onetime Supply Co., but Sherald is being featured on a documentary that explains Black artists’ role in American Art History — wearing a sweatshirt that was printed by a Black printer (Onetime Supply Co), that was in turn designed by Black artists (Work/ Play)—curated for Contemporary Art Museum of St Louis. I highly doubt Sherald’s decision to wear the piece on screen for her part in the documentary was intentional but it’s very poetic when you think about it all.
