Five Beauties Rising

Willie Cole’s work across various media is defined by its conflation of the mundane and the unexpected. His Five Beauties Rising series, printed from crushed and hammered ironing boards, taps into the symbolic memory behind these everyday objects, exploring the intertwined legacy of domestic work and institutional racism. Each print features the name of a woman—acknowledging individuals but also creating a sense of kinship. Five Beauties Rising simultaneously celebrates African art and culture while forcing viewers to acknowledge the history of oppression. These prints taken from ironing boards also evoke the labor of printmaking--of which this is a virtuosic example.

Kristen Lauritzen ‘21

"The images conjure slave ships, tombstones, shrouds, and mummies, but other associations also shoulder their way into this scene. They also look like stained-glass windows, shields, veils, bolts of patterned fabric, sentinels, guardians, saints, even surfboards.” - Jennifer Roberts, Radcliffe’s Johnson-Kulukundis Family Faculty Director of the Arts

Similar Images (Etching)