PULSE NEW YORK - Booth A-110 - Fairs - FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY

KATRINA ANDRY

Mammy Complex: Unfit Mommies Make for Fit Nannies, 2011

digital media and color woodcut reduction print on coventry linen rag

62.75 x 43 inches

Edition of 6

This is a stereotype of the Mammy. The Mammy is a natural caregiver. She’s happy serving others. She’s especially happy watching other people’s children. While the Mammy is seen as being a natural caregiver, on the other side of that coin - as a black woman, she is also seen as needing instruction or being incapable of raising her own children. This piece is all about the stereotype that black women in black communities are incapable of raising their own children, and that they are faulted for the crime and poverty that often run rampant in urban black communities. It is thought that incapable, single black moms are the reason there are poorly behaved black children that turn into poorly behaved black adults. This sentiment is felt throughout the black community by black women. When I was in NYC in 2009, and even here in New Orleans, most of the nannies I would see were black or brown minorities. It’s funny how these women are seen as perfectly capable of watching and caring for other people’s children, but not their own. To put it in historical context, black slave women were often separated from their children on the auction block, though some were often called to be nursing maids and nannies to the white children that lived in the “big house.” Separating the black woman’s children from her was seen as not cruel because it was believed that black women were callus towards their own children, and held a different set of feelings than white people had towards theirs.

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KATRINA ANDRY

The Jungle Bunny Gave You Fever. The Only Cure is to Fuck the Bunny. She Wants It., 2011

digital media and color woodcut reduction print on coventry linen rag

62.75 x 43 inches

Edition of 6

This is a stereotype of the Jungle Bunny; the hypersexual, exotic creature from another land. The aspect of being hypersexual was often used from the 1400-1940s as a reason as to why raping women of color wasn’t seen as a crime against humanity. They wanted it obviously. The term “jungle fever”, as if being involved with a person of color implies that you’ve been stricken with some sort of disease because it’s not natural for two people from different ethnic backgrounds to “love” one another. There can only be a feverish lust between the two of them, no true actual feelings of love. How could you love a Jungle Bunny? This piece confronts the stereotype of women of color being lascivious, hypersexual, animalistic, exotic beings.

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KATRINA ANDRY

The Unfit Mommy and Her Spawn Will Wreck Your Comfortable Suburban Existence, 2010

digital media and color woodcut reduction print on coventry linen rag

60.75 x 47 inches

Edition of 7

This piece relates to the “Mammy Complex” in that it implies that black women are careless with their own children, and ineffective at raising contributing members of society. Her children are not as “precious” as the children of her white peers. They aren’t cherished, and they will grow up to be menaces that need to be kept away from us. This enforces the idea of the “Super-predator”. Children that will inevitably grow up to be menaces of society and the only solution to keeping them away from us is to lock them up. They were born menaces, from a menacing mother, and we want nothing to do with them. We’d rather not live around them in our suburbia. They’ll ruin it for us. Seeing black children in this light, as the “Super-predator” paves the way for mass incarceration of black males (adults and children) and for situations we now find ourselves in like the shooting of Trayvon Martin and many others that have been killed based on fear alone.

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KATRINA ANDRY

Genetic Inferiority: Darwin's Theory of White Superiority and Black Unintelligence, 2009

digital media and color woodcut reduction print on coventry linen rag

61.5 x 45.5 inches

Edition of 7

There was a book written in the mid 90s called “The Bell Curve” by Charles Murray (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve). In it he used eugenics to explain the capacity for learning between different races. Asians had the highest capacity for learning, and then whites, and then latinos, and then blacks. He argued that there was a difference in IQ levels between different ethnic groups that is genetic, and that couldn’t ultimately be overcome by hard work. Many black children in schools are treated like they’re less capable of learning, and are more likely to be sent to special ED or remedial classrooms, and more likely to be seen as troublemakers rather than students and so expelled and suspended at a much higher rate than white students. Students of color are often seen as not nearly as capable of higher learning and development as their white and asian peers.

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