themakeupbrush:Radha Blank at the 2022 Met GalaCaption via Instagram:“OBEAH WOMAN, COME INTO T

themakeupbrush:

Radha Blank at the 2022 Met Gala

Caption via Instagram:

“OBEAH WOMAN, COME INTO THE ROOM!
A Prologue.
I’d been invited to remix a room in the #metcostumeinstitute #americanwing for their #inamerica exhibit. I integrated the dress of designer Maria Hollander, a White woman abolitionist. But when I asked who made the dress and her politically charged quilt seen in the exhibit, the seamstress remained unknown. This was chance to take #metgala invitation from a red carpet moment to a truth telling one. I would create a visual prologue to my #wegoodthx! installation.

I would rep a woman who could have made Hollander’s dress- an Obeah Woman who by day used her hands to sew, cook, wash White folk clothes & tend to their chirren and by night used her hands to conjure spells for our survival using ancestral African spiritual practices not meant to survive the middle passage. This would be my homage to Marie Laveau but also The Condomble Woman, The Santeria Priestess, The Ifa Woman, The Yoruba Priestess. The Voodoo Vixen and all women practitioners of ancestral arts from Africa.

This woman would represent the unseen Black women who have sewn the fabric of this country but she would also be my armor as faces and bodies like mine aren’t usually seen or celebrated in these spaces.”

Radha Blank was one of the 9 directors selected to help design the rooms for the exhibition.

I love us.