Details

Title

The Three-Headed Girl: A Comprehensive List of Everything That Will Try to Kill You on a Sunday, or, The Three Headed Girl Knows Exactly How to Stay Alive

Artist/Maker

Vanessa German (American, born 1976)

Date

2018

Medium

Mixed media assemblage

Dimensions

72 x 24 x 24 inches

Credit

Purchase with Folk Art Acquisition Fund

Accession #

2019.198

On View

On View - Stent Family Wing, Skyway, Gallery 404

Vanessa German is an artist based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who is known for her community-based social practice and mixed media sculptures dedicated to the empowerment of black women. Her often life-size sculptures draw on a wide array of found material and are based on traditional Congolese Nkisi Power Figure sculptures, which create protection, fend off evil spirits, and punish wrongdoers. This sculpture is part of a series of work she made for an exhibition at the Carl Hammer Gallery titled, Things Are Not Always What They Seem: A Phenomenology of Black Girlhood. Art historian Anita Bateman has observed the following of the specific objects German chose for this and other sculptures in the series : "Clocks, mirrors, birds, and other tchotchkes are repeating motifs throughout this body of work, perhaps symbolizing the delicacy of a childhood denied—or lost time—as black girls are perceived as being older and less innocent than their white counterparts."

Image Copyright

© (c) Vanessa German