Alison Saar: Breach

Profusely illustrated exhibition catalogue with essays by art historian Kitty McManus Zurko and historian John M. Barry; original poetry by Evie Shockley and Samiya Bashir.

The catalogue documents Breach, the 2016-17 exhibition of Saar’s mixed media sculpture, paintings, and works on paper. The exhibition was the culmination of Alison Saar's creative research on American rivers and their historical relationship to the lives of African Americans.

Water imagery is woven through the artwork. She explores floods not only as natural phenomena; but reflects on the complex interaction of social, cultural, and political factors associated with flooding and its aftermath.

Her interest was piqued by the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927. Described as the worst recorded river disaster in U.S. history, this catastrophe had a profound impact on African Americans living in the Mississippi Delta—the flood exposed the conditions of poor African American sharecroppers and tenant farmers and their relationship with cotton plantation owners—and effected long-term social, cultural, and federal and national political changes.

52 pages, profusely illustrated
ISBN 978-0-9982772-1-9
© 2017