Kerry James Marshall
So This is What You Want?, 1992
The paintings So this what you want? (1992) and Stigma Stigmata (1992) are full of religious references, for example to early Renaissance and Byzantine Christian images of saints, emphasized by the golden aureoles around the women's heads, the red crosses and the stigmata. Other references can be made to (white) beauty ideals and the role of (black) women in our society. The collage technique allows that all elements can stand beside each other in a balanced composition. Despite the placing of these symbols in proximity to one another and the constant re-working of his canvases, Marshall succeeds in making a non-hierarchical and surprising synthesis between form and content.