![]() So I think about how they do that and I want to do that, I want to do that kind of work. But I think about how these European painters are revered, and I look at their work and I see them, too, trying to access a tender location through touch, trying to make a sensation true. Unlike other contemporary artists who claim the portrait as their mtier, Packer isn’t aiming to glamorize anyone, much. Her source material ranges from photographs to sittings to imagined scenarios, but the subjects are always the people she is closest tofriends, fellow artists, relatives, lovers. I wouldn’t know where to start looking for portraits of black women, especially by black women. JENNIFER PACKER PAINTS intimate pictures. When you go to Italy, you expect to be blown away by all these amazing artworks of important people mostly men. But there’s no real home-place for black female subjectivity as represented in painting. But Jennifer Packer’s two exhibitions, both of which I’ve seen Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep at MOCA Los Angeles and The. ![]() I love art history, I was blown away by how the European masters captured so much feeling in some of their portraits-artists like El Greco, Michelangelo. Jennifer Packer, unlike Jasper Johns, is too young as yet for a 2-museum retrospective like the joint effort produced for the 91-year old artist at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art. Jennifer Packer and Corvi-Mora, LondonĪre there certain painters throughout history who you look to for inspiration when creating your portraits? And it became a shorthand way to assess the value of black women’s bodies. I liked it because it was a really concise way of assessing a level power and strength between women and the people-friends, family, children, etc.-they look after. But the weakness isn’t necessarily a fault-it’s more of way of noting the need to take extra care of that person. It’s an assessment of not only physical sensitivity, but also an emotional sensitivity, perhaps bordering on weakness. I’ve been thinking about black female subjectivity in my work for a long time and I think about how black women often use this term “tenderheaded” to describe other black women. What does the title of your Renaissance Society show, Tenderheaded, mean? Just before she packed up her canvases to send to Chicago, Packer invited Observer into her studio to talk about her latest works, finding strength in vulnerability, and how she knows when a painting is finally finished. More importantly, it prompted her to reconsider how to depict black subjects in painting when their physical bodies seem so vulnerable within our current society. One such floral work, Say Her Name, serves as the artist’s personal reflection on the news of Sandra Bland’s death, which she said made her feel saddened in a way she didn’t fully understand, prompting her to think about how best to represent the “unlocatable” sense of loss you feel when struck by the death of someone you didn’t know intimately. For her first solo institutional exhibition, “ Tenderheaded ,” on view at The Renaissance Society in Chicago through November 5, Packer further explores emotional and physical vulnerability through new portraits as well as a developing series of painted funerary bouquets.
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