When dreams are the color of paper bags
Artist Ashley A. Jones’ one-woman exhibit “Colorism: Thinking Outside the Brown Paper Bag” is a smart yet deceptively straightforward take on a topic that has fueled intra-racial conflict within AfricanAmerican communities since the end of slavery.
In a nation where every institution, ritual, political ideology and law was built upon the edifice of white supremacy, those born outside of that tribe had to contend with a ruthless pseudo-science that fixated on the color of their skin to the exclusion of all else.
According to the centuries-old theology of white dominance, all it takes is a single drop of “black blood” to irrevocably stain a person’s white purity. This deeply illogical and unscientific superstition was so deeply ingrained in society that laws against miscegenation and interracial marriage were on the books until the late 1960s — the era of the moon landings.
While racial discrimination against blacks was codified and enforced by decades of Jim Crow, there was an insidious parallel to that injustice much closer to home for black people.
Because whiteness was the default mode, proximity to whiteness in the form of light skin and “good hair” became the way of advancement among a minority of black folks who valued those things at the expense of their dignity.
Among those who aspired to be among the black elite, a simple criteria for marriage, business and friendship quickly evolved in ways that echoed the logic of white supremacy. If you were darker than a brown supermarket paper bag, then your options always would be limited.
If you were several shades lighter than that paper bag, you could at least dream of a life in which being light-skinned brought you temporary reprieve from the daily indignities of blackness.
This intra-racial dalliance with self-hatred fascinated Ashley Jones enough to prompt her to explore it in her thesis art show at Indiana University of Pennsylvania a few years ago.
At 35, the Duquesne native who now lives in Penn Hills is too young to have experienced the rawest forms of colorism personally, but she could see how it affected those in the generations that came before her once she had a better understanding of what it was.
Ms. Jones’ thesis show grew out of her own sense of alienation as the only African-American grad student in IUP’s art program at the time. “I was dealing with a lot of identity issues myself,” she said. And she was determined to deal forthrightly with all internal and external issues tied to history and culture that struck her fancy.
After stumbling across several news stories about colorism, Ms. Jones decided it was time to explore an area that was still taboo among older blacks who hated to see “our dirty laundry aired in public.”
“I wanted to do art that showed how colorism is still going on, so I thought brown paper bags would be a way to illustrate it,” Ms. Jones said.
A skilled portraitist, Ms. Jones rendered the faces of friends, relatives, acquaintances and strangers on paper bags and brown cardboard boxes. They are the faces of black women of all ages and all seem to demand eye contact. The show displays only a fraction of the more than 300 portraits she drew between 2015 and 2018.
“A lot of black women deal with colorism in a way that’s harsher because they’re also balancing issues of complexion and hair and body type,” the artist said, explaining why only one gender was on display in the show.
Ms. Jones also built in a subtle interactive element: The viewer must determine, much like those who dealt with the social custom decades ago, whether the person depicted on the paper bag with shadows and highlights was originally lighter or darker than the paper bag itself.
It invites the viewer to become conscious of his or her own colorism as well as retroactively complicit in its oppressive ritual. It is a simple, elegant and powerful piece of education about a custom that never really went away as much as mutated into what have become general standards of beauty.
Phrases from the Jim Crow past alternate on the sides of cardboard boxes: “I hope my baby’s hair don’t get nappy,” “You have to be from Africa, as dark as you are,” “I wish I was lighter” and “You don’t act like other black women,” among other familiar signs of racial pathology.
“Colorism: Thinking Outside the Brown Paper Bag” will be at the Phosphor Project Space gallery at 7720 Waverly St. in Wilkinsburg until Feb. 16. Gallery hours are Sundays, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., or by appointment. The closing celebration on the 16th is 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and will feature a screening of the film “Dark Girls,” directed by D. Channsin Berry and Bill Duke. Admission is free but seating is limited.
There will also be an artist talk and Q&A with Ms. Jones and curator Tara Fay Coleman about the contemporary legacy of colorism and how it continues to exert a notso-subtle influence on our culture.
For more information: visit phosphorpgh.com or email phosphorpgh@gmail.com.