Renee Stout

1958—

Sculptor, mixed-media artist

Renee Stout is an acclaimed artist whose sculptures and mixed-media installations explore human relationships and the roots of her African heritage. Many of her works evoke dreams, memories, spirits, and the need for healing. The power of female sexuality and the search for identity are also central themes, as are critiques of social injustice. Her work has been described as "strange and scary, as well as beautiful and awe-inspiring" by critics, according to Penelope Blair of Savoy.

Deeply influenced by African art, Stout uses a wide array of materials, including found objects, in her work. Many of her pieces evoke mystery, or suggest elusive stories. As Stout states on her Web site, "I see each one of my pieces as a fragment or installment in an ongoing narrative that's my contribution to telling the story of who we are as a society at this point in time."

Inspired by Fetish Objects

Born in Kansas in 1958, Stout grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where her first exposure to African art occurred during visits to the city's Carnegie Museum. Interested in drawing since earliest childhood, she received considerable encouragement from her family and, in fourth grade, was invited to attend special classes at the museum for elementary school students. The teacher required students to visit the natural history exhibits and to draw objects on display. One such object, an African figure studded with nails, fascinated Stout. Though she did not understand its cultural significance, she returned to this exhibit whenever she visited the museum; she was to draw much of her future inspiration as an artist from this introduction to African art.

Stout studied art and trained to be a painter at Pittsburgh's Carnegie-Mellon University. Her first works were in the realist tradition of artists such as Edward Hopper, but Stout soon realized that such an approach would prove too limiting for her creative vision. She wanted to explore spiritual and psychic themes that could not be adequately expressed through realistic renderings of landscapes, buildings, or still lifes on canvas.

After a year's artist-in-residency at Northeastern University in Boston, Stout moved to Washington, D.C. Stout related to Eric D. Bookhardt of Gambit Weekly that "Washington made her more aware of her African-American identity, as well as the societal chaos that was all around her in the nation's capital. A painted canvas was no longer enough." In Washington, she discovered the work of found-object artist Joseph Cornell and assemblage artist Betye Saar, and began experimenting with three-dimensional creations, including sculptures inspired by Kongo minkisi—African fetish figures believed to possess powers to affect human lives. Her 1988 piece, Fetish #2, is a life-size figure made from a plaster cast of the artist's own nude body. As described by Michelle A. Owen-Workman in Readers, Advisors, and Storefront Churches: Renee Stout: A Mid-Career Retrospective, the piece is a "veritable study of [Stout's] own existence." The figure stands straight, arms at its sides; it is adorned with various power objects such as small pouches of medicines, cowrie shells, dried flowers, a photograph of a baby, and a postage stamp from Niger. The figure, according to Owen-Workman, symbolizes "Stout's ultimate power over her own life and the path to knowledge she was seeking." Part of the Dallas Museum of Art's permanent collection, the piece brought Stout national attention.

In 1993 Stout had her first major solo exhibition, "Astonishment and Power: Kongo Minkisi and the Art of Renee Stout," at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art. Holland Cotter observed in the New York Times that the show was often "soul-stirring and beautiful." While appreciating the questions that the show raised about the relationship between African and Western art, however, the critic felt that the show did not succeed fully in answering them. Cotter described the potency and "tantalizing presence of hidden substances" apparent in the minkisi, but felt that Stout's pieces were, by contrast, disappointing. "Set beside Kongo examples," Cotter wrote, "her minkisi throw the gulf between the traditional non-Western religious image and the Western art object—however referential, even reverential, that object may be—into clear relief. They are, simply put, spiritual and esthetic worlds apart." The show attracted significant attention and confirmed Stout's stature as an important young artist.

Intrigued by Vodou

Since the late 1980s Stout has continued to explore themes of self-empowerment and healing. In the early 1990s she became increasingly interested in spiritual traditions from Africa, including vodou—a religion that developed in Haiti among West African slaves who combined their native spiritual traditions with influences from Roman Catholicism, the religion of their French colonial masters. A strong expression of the dual traditions of vodou is found in Stout's "Hoodoo Holy" (2000). In the center of this piece is a bottle, ostensibly filled with holy water—part of Catholic ritual. The assemblage also includes written instructions for making a vodou potion. Inside the bottle, however, is not water but a collection of special aromatic oils. As Owen-Workman observed, "Within one simple image, Stout has created an icon that simultaneously denotes healing, the washing away of sins, and renewal."

Many of Stout's works are associated with two personas that have intrigued her: "Madame Ching" and "Fatima Mayfield." Madame Ching was an old "conjure woman" in Pittsburgh when Stout was a child; though Stout never knew her, the artist often passed Madame Ching's house and was intrigued by the atmosphere of secrecy and spells that surrounded it. As a working artist, Stout developed a character based on Madame Ching but also incorporating the vodou goddess of love and sexuality. Several of Stout's pieces, including "Traveling Root Store" (1995) and "Madame Ching's Love Products" (1995), depict the potions that this character dispenses to her customers, who need help with their love lives. Fatima, whom Stout describes on her Web site as her "alter ego," is a fictional fortuneteller in New Orleans, who inherits her aunt's root store and preserves the healing traditions associated with it. "Fatima's Sign" (2001) is a representation of an advertising sign for this root store. It lists store hours as well as descriptions and prices of the various products on offer: Florida Water, Money Drawing Kits, Wishing Stones, Holy Spirits Bath Set, Abundance Charms, Jinx Removing Bath, Against Envy Powder, She's All Mine Oil, and many more.

A similar work is "Amor II," painted to resemble an old-fashioned poster or magazine advertisement for a product called "Lover's Incense." Words at the bottom state that "Fatima Recommends!" several additional products, including Mt. St. Helens Ash (For Men) and Wine of Erzulie. In an interview with Stout in Black Artists of D.C. Newsletter, Toni Nelson admired the humor in these works, and admitted that they are so realistic that "I was personally getting ready to go to Fatima's on Florida Avenue." What particularly attracted her to African religions, Stout told Nelson, is that "women are essential to the whole worldview of balance. I am affected by the fact that there's no femininity in the world today."

At a Glance …

Born in 1958, in Junction City, KS. Education: Carnegie-Mellon University, BFA, 1980.

Career: Artist, 1980s-; University of Georgia, Athens, GA, visiting professor, 1995.

Awards: Northeastern University, Afro-American Master Artists in Residency Program, 1984-1985.

Addresses: Web—www.reneestout.com.

Made Political Statements

Stout has also made work with more overt political content. "Point of View" (1994) critiques the media for presenting inaccurate images of African Americans and other ethnic groups. The three-dimension piece includes a black-and-white photograph of a black man aiming a gun directly at the viewer; at the bottom are pieces of street trash such as bullet casings, a crack bag, and cigarette butts. Text on the back of the piece reads: "The man who posed for this picture is actually a Maryland mailman and art collector. When he is off duty he likes to wear baggy clothes because they are comfortable. Women often clutch their purses when they pass him on the sidewalk."

Another three-dimensional piece, "The Chairman Watching the Game" (1997), expresses outrage at the role of powerful multinational corporations in instigating violence in such places as Rwanda. The piece is structured as a sort of board game, with the figure of the chairman watching from above as black and white soldier figures enact a game. The two black figures, who point guns at each other, are identified as Hutus and Tutsis; the white figures are the "Gang of 8"—a reference to the Group of 8 nations with the largest economies. Included in the piece are such game instructions as "Finance Civil War 40 pts; Encourage Hanging of Dissenters 60 pts; Destroy Culture 100 pts."

A series of Stout's works address the need for gun control legislation. She began by making an actual gun for herself—an act she hoped would reveal how to work anger into her art. As Stephen Bennett-Phillips explained in Readers, Advisors, and Storefront Churches, "It was Stout's way of holding-up the viewer, jolting him or her into asking why it was there." Stout went on to create guns for other figures she esteemed as revolutionaries, such as South African political leader Winnie Mandela as well as historical figures, including ex-slave and Underground Railroad leader Harriet Tubman and Latin American guerilla fighter Che Guevara. Other pieces in the series include "Baby's First Gun" (1998), a satirical response to school shootings, with cute images of a baby and a gun as a toy. None of the guns in the series contain actual working parts.

Stout has enjoyed several solo exhibitions across the United States, and her work is included in the collections of major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Museum of American Art, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Rhode Island School of Design; and the Detroit Institute of Arts. As Sarah Valdez observed in an Art in America review of a 2002 exhibit, "Stout immerses herself in the notion that there's more going on in the world than meets the eye. She is tuned in to a powerful domain of secrets and souls that just might trump the logic of the material world."

Selected works

Solo exhibitions

Astonishment and Power: Kongo Minkisi and the Art of Renee Stout, 1993.

Dear Robert, I'll See You at the Crossroads, 1995.

Madam's Secrets, 1996.

Dueling Dualities, 1997.

Rantings in the Night Studio, 1999.

Readers, Advisors, and Storefront Churches, 2002 and 2005.

Fatima's Dreams, 2003-2004.

Fragments of a Secret Life, 2005.

Church of the Crossroads, 2006.

Sources

Books

Contemporary Women Artists, St. James Press, 1999.

Farrington, Lisa E., The Herstory of Black Art Creating Their Own Image The History of African-American Women Artists, Oxford University Press, 2005.

Owen-Workman, Michelle A., and Phillips, Stephen Bennet, Readers, Advisors, and Storefront Churches: Renee Stout: A Mid-Career Retrospective, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2002.

Periodicals

Art in America, January, 2002, p. 111.

Gambit Weekly (New Orleans, LA), August 16, 2005, p. 41.

New York Times, July 18, 1993, p. A27.

Savoy, Spring 2005, p. 84.

Washington Post, October 20, 2005, p. C5; January 26, 2006, p. H1.

On-line

"Ms. Herb Doctor Is In," Best of New Orleans, www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2004-06-08/art_review.html (August 8, 2007).

Renee Stout,www.reneestout.com/ (August 8, 2007).

"Renee Stout," Smithsonian American Art Museum,http://americanart.si.edu/search/artist_bio.cfm?ID=6586 (August 8, 2007).

"Unapologetic and Infinite BLACK Found! Exhibit Charts New Ground for DC Artists," Black Artists of D.C. Newsletter, http://blackartistsofdc.org/EL01Summer06.pdf (August 8, 2007).