MAXINE WALKER, SELECTED WORKS, 1985-1997

“Despite only being active between 1985 and 1997, the Handsworth-based artist was a force within the Black British Art movement, co-founding the Monocrone Women’s Photography Collective, Women + Photography, Polareyes and Autograph itself (then known as the Association of Black Photographers). She was also an art critic, actively winning the support of her peers, Ingrid Pollard, Joy Greogry and Adrian Piper.

In her 1995 series, ‘Untitled’, British-Jamaican photographer Maxine Walker disrupts the idea of an approved womanhood through a photo booth style montage of self-portraits, presented as if taken within seconds of each other. Included in the ‘Self-Evident’ exhibition of Black photography at Birmingham’s IKON gallery that same year, the series is a confident projection of glamour and style, affirming the motley of Black women Walker knew. She appears mischievous and rousing with her long, fringed black wig, unzipped black jacket, black choker and gold dangling earrings. In another image, her skin tone is brightened to match her cropped platinum hair, purple lipstick and black halterneck. Meanwhile, in a separate still, she reverts to the ‘natural’ look of short black dreadlocks, wearing a dark blue knitted jacket and shaking her head with her eyes closed.

The home is a contested site for Black women. Gendered and inherently political, it plays host to a sexist social history that defines domestic servitude as a woman’s ‘natural’ role along with child-rearing and pageantry. In spite of this, the home also serves as a place of refuge, rest, regeneration and meditation. Walker’s self-shot series ‘Black Beauty’ (1991) captures this tension in a room stripped of colour and decoration. In Cleansing (1991), the artist sits at a table in her bedroom, where the tested and sanctified products of femininity –  toner, eye gel, cotton wool, a vanity mirror – encircle her on doilies. With her hair wrapped in a white cloth and shoulders bare, Walker leans in to taste the rituals of womanhood, withdrawn but committed nonetheless.” - Frieze