ASIA STEWART, LA NÉGRESSE BLANCHE
“La Négresse blanche is a six hour performance that marks the beginning of Stewart's Graft series. The piece is titled after Mayotte Capecia’s book of the same name and draws off of selections from Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks. During the performance, a Black subject attempts to become white by covering herself in glue and paint. After waiting for the paste to dry, the subject strips off the glue and ingests bits of it.
La Négresse blanche illustrates an epidermalization of whiteness. What happens when bodies renounce a Blackness they cannot escape to approach the asymptote of whiteness? How is the performance of whiteness worn (down)?
The Graft series explores how subjects modify and manipulate their bodies to straddle (ab)normality. The series communicates how a Black subject, determined from without and defined by all she is not, actively participates in her own transformation – a metamorphosis represented by the adoption or removal of a new layer of skin.” - Asia Stewart