Praise and Defect: In Honor of Edmonia Lewis
“I don't want you to praise me...Some praise me because I am a colored girl, and I don't want that kind of praise. I had rather you would point out my defects, for that will teach me something.”
- Edmonia Lewis
Portrait of Edmonia Lewis
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum
Although the details of her early life are fuzzy, Edmonia Lewis (ca. 1844 - ca. 1907) was born in Greenbush, N.Y., near Albany to a Chippewa mother and a West Indian/free African American father. After her birth, Lewis was given the name “Wildfire.” Sadly, she became an orphan at a young age, and lived with her mother’s tribe. Her half brother, a wealthy entrepreneur, was able to fund her early education before she went to Oberlin College in 1859.
Lewis’ experience at Oberlin turned into a series of traumatic and racist events, including accusations that she had poisoned her white roommate (which led to her being beaten close to death) and stolen art supplies. She eventually left Oberlin, ending up in Boston where she was welcomed by abolitionists who supported her art. Although she could not afford art courses many of her white male peers were enrolled in, the sculptor Edward Brackett mentored her and helped her set up a studio. After relative financial success provided by her artwork, Lewis left for Europe in the mid-1860s, visiting London, Paris and Florence, and eventually settling in Rome. Here is where Lewis created the bulk of her work, oftentimes commissioned works by white patrons.
Early in her artistic career, Lewis sculpted portrait medallions of figures like Civil War Colonel Robert Shaw, a white officer who had commanded an infantry of African American soldiers. From there, especially while in Rome, she created portrait busts and larger sculptures, often in the neoclassical style, and dealing with subject matter pertaining to Greek myths, biblical stories, and her patrons. One of her most famous works is The Death of Cleopatra, which depicts the tragic moment after Cleopatra stabbed herself to death. Other works hint at her identities, such as portrait busts of Hiawatha and Minnehaha, two figures from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Song of Hiawatha,” and Forever Free (Morning of Liberty), a larger sculpture depicting two formerly enslaved Africans who had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.
“Lewis negotiated constantly her status as insider/outsider, subject/object, self/other. Her complicity and her utilitarian approach to race and gender highlight her importance as a cultural object, and sculpture was the perfect vehicle to communicate that comprehension. Sculpture allowed her to blur the boundaries between subject and object, between subjectivity and subject matter, because while there is a subject of sculpture, it is also an object of critique. Sculpture best suited her personality dynamic; for sculpture is the embodied art, and as an African and Native American sculptor, she became both the subject and object of her own oeuvre, allowing for the simplistic readings of her work as ‘self-portraiture.’”
- Kirsten Pai Buick, Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian Subject, xxi
In recent years, she has come to represent a complex and “overlooked” figure in American, African American, Native American, and Women’s art history. As art historian Kirsten Pai Buick states, central to Lewis’ life was the negotiation of her identities, which in the 19th century very often ostracized and excluded her from opportunities and communities. Even after her death, her Indigenous identity has been especially questioned, with some people stating that she only claimed Indigenous identity to “further her career as a sculptor.”
In spite of the oppression Lewis experienced because of her identities, there were moments where she did not always embrace them. She’s noted as saying “I have Indian blood in me, you know. Why, do you know I almost envied the freedom of the Indians which I saw on the plains? But then they were so dirty. I didn’t like that in them.” There is no doubt that this statement feeds into anti-Indigenous rhetoric, especially rampant in the earlier years of the United States. Some of her artwork also feeds into stereotypical imagery of Native people. But should this denounce her Indigenous identity? No. There is no doubt that these kinds of statements are unacceptable. However, in Lewis’ life she constantly navigated through anti-women, anti-Black, and anti-Indigenous structures. Self-disdain is something many Native people grapple with, especially in anti-Indigenous environments, and sometimes, and unfortunately, it is also a method of survival, and step to understanding ourselves. We do not know why she said these things, nor if she truly believed them, and yet we cannot ignore that they were said. With that said, we also cannot convolute her story and identity.
For me, personally, as a non-Black Navajo art historian who studies global Indigenous contemporary art, Edmonia has become a figure, woman, and artist I feel protective of. I was first introduced to Lewis’ work by the first Indigenous art history professor I had ever had in college, Shawon Kinew. Because of this, I have grown to develop a special kind of intimacy with Edmonia and her story. In the canon of American art, and especially sculpture, Edmonia’s work was the earliest kind of Native art beyond “traditional” forms (the traditional vs. modern binary isn’t real, but that’s a post for another day) I noticed in museum collections. She was complex, complicated, and under-appreciated in her time and after, and I feel a responsibility to pay tribute to her now.
“Blackness is always already Indigenous.”
While studying her work, I find myself asking how do we honor an artist seemingly denied so much in her lifetime? Perhaps a start could be reframing our frameworks of Indigeneity. We should always support Black liberation regardless of how it relates to our own identities, but in the words of Kohar Avakian, a Black/Armenian/Nipmuc scholar and The Chapter House contributor, “enslaved Africans were displaced Indigenous peoples.” When we place Blackness in this framework, we can better understand the trauma of being removed from our homes and homelands. Especially in the context of African American identities, this framing might help us work towards their sovereignty and liberation. This also helps us understand that anti-Blackness is also anti-Indigenous, and vice versa.
Another way is to simply give Black and Black Native artists their flowers and praise while they are alive. Some tangible ways to do this are to buy, write about, share and curate their artwork. Some of my favorite contemporary Black and Black Native artists are Natalie Ball, Stephen Qacung Blanchett, Radmilla Cody, Demond Melancon, Gloria Olisa, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Paige Pettibon.
Finally, we must always work to denounce anti-Blackness in our communities. No quantity of blood, list of “Pretendians,” or museum label will ever be able to tell us, especially our Black Native siblings and elders, who we are. And it is up to us, non-Black (Native) people, to actively speak up when we see anti-Blackness, and to especially promote Black Native voices. So, today, and every day, I am committing to honoring African American, Black, Black Native, Freedmen, and all Indigenous art, histories, futures, and humanity, including Edmonia.
