Non Traditional Family 2000, Oil on canvas, 49 x 48 3/4 in. [Enlarge in New Window]

Beverly McIver: The Liberation of Mammy

As a child, Beverly McIver dreamed of becoming a professional clown--"an attempt," she says, "to escape my black skin, poverty, and the housing project I once called home." Inspired by those memories, McIver has painted portraits of herself in clownface, using the stark white greasepaint to come to terms with her experiences as an African American woman and "my ambivalent feelings about being black." Going further, she's donned blackface make-up and an Afro wig for a series of self-portraits that explore racial stereotypes in a searing way. Reflecting on McIver's work, the African American author Sapphire has written: "For a minute the pain and humiliation the images conjure for me seem like more than I can bear. Then I look at the paintings and have to acknowledge they are not unbearable, indeed they are what I have borne. . . . [T]hey are wordless testaments to what it has been to be a black woman in America."

The Liberation of Mammy is the first of McIver's painting cycles to be inspired by individuals beyond the immediate circle of self and family. Traveling through the American South, the North Carolina-born artist has been interviewing, photographing, and videotaping African American domestic workers--women who, like her own mother, have spent their working lives cleaning for and taking care of white families. "It was this occupation that clothed and fed me and my two sisters," McIver has written. "I paint these images with a desire to make peace with the role of servant as a negative or underclass occupation. . . . I hope to convey my mother's pride as a maid and mammy. . . . I embrace these stereotypes, owning them and finding a resting place for them." While the paintings are inspired by the women she's interviewing, McIver isn't painting the women themselves. "I'm painting their stories," she explains. "I paint myself in blackface, doing whatever domestic task each woman enjoys doing most." Along with the make-up, she wears white gloves, an Afro wig, and a dress that belonged to her grandmother. "It's my mother's wig and white church gloves," she adds.

McIver's mother accompanies her on all interview trips. "She's part of the process," she says. "The idea came from her." Her mother's presence puts McIver's subjects at ease. "She has a lot in common with the women. They go to church every week. They're in their 60s and 70s, and they're busy people, with jobs, helping out at the nursing home, and other activities. They know what's important to them, and they don't want to miss it." She laughs. "They're not willing to miss bingo to talk to me."

One of the things that has consistently struck McIver is the women's commitment to their white employers. "They have some kind of love for each other," she says. "I can't really articulate what that relationship is. One of them will say, 'Oh, she's like a sister to me,' but it's not that. It's something else. It's an unequal playing field with respect to power. I'm struggling with that in the paintings--how to push that through emotionally, to articulate the uniqueness of this relationship." She pauses for a moment, lost in thought. "As I get closer to it, I'll be able to talk about those differences in a way that's not so blatant--to work it out so that we'll all be touched. We'll all feel that there's something familiar there."

McIver first began painting as an undergraduate at North Carolina Central University in Durham. She returned to teach for three years after graduate school at Penn State University, then taught at Duke University in Durham. For the past six years, she's been at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, where she was recently awarded tenure. In addition to support from Creative Capital, McIver has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in Cambridge, Massachusetts that will allow her to paint full-time for a year. She hopes to complete The Liberation of Mammy by early 2003.

"My mother is extremely proud of this project," says McIver. "It empowers her, I think. Before, she never asked about my work. Now she asks me, 'What are you painting?' There's something wonderful taking place in our relationship. And that's worth the whole project."

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THIS PROJECT'S CATEGORIES: Visual > Painting / Drawing | African American Themes | Americana | Southwest / Pacific | 2001