Jump to content

Nona Faustine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nona Faustine
Born1977
New York City, U.S.
Died (aged 48)
Alma mater
Children1

Nona Faustine (1977 – March 20, 2025) was an American photographer and visual artist. Her work focused on history, identity, representation, and what it means to be a woman in the 21st century.[1] Her artwork is in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum[2] and the Carnegie Museum.[3]

Early life and education

[edit]

Nona Faustine was born in 1977 in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Crown Heights.[4][5] Her parents came to the city from North Carolina.[6] Faustine was introduced to photography as a child. Her father and uncle were amateur photographers, and Faustine's first camera was a gift from her uncle.[7]

Faustine was initially inspired to become a photographer by a series of Time Life books. She was influenced by Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, and photojournalist Ernst Haas.[7] However, at a young age Faustine struggled to find herself in the histories of photography she encountered, which focused on photographers who were disproportionately male and white.[7]

She graduated with a B.F.A. degree in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1997, and a M.F.A. degree in 2013 from the International Center of Photography at Bard College.[8][9]

Career

[edit]

Faustine's work focused primarily on the experiences of Black women, often through the medium of self-portraitry. For example, her 2016 portrait Say Her Name, photographed in her family's apartment in Flatbush, was created as a tribute to Sandra Bland, a Black woman who died in police custody in 2015.[4]

Faustine's work also looked at broader questions of American history, as in a photo series that placed national landmarks (such as the Lincoln Memorial and the Statue of Liberty) behind bars.[4][10]

As an undergraduate, Faustine worked primarily in documentary photography. She shot one series, "Young Mothers", of young women she knew through her family, friends, and her neighborhood.[6] She also had an interest in landscape photography, which she later utilized in "White Shoes".[6] As an MFA student, Faustine began to move away from the traditional documentary model, saying in 2016, "It just didn't work for me anymore. I wanted more room to play with communication. Conceptual works appealed to me".[7]

Mitochondria (begun 2008)

[edit]

In the series "Mitochondria", a reference to mitochondrial DNA, which is fully inherited from the mother, Faustine photographed herself, her mother, her sister, and her daughter in their shared home in Brooklyn, NY. The work illuminates both the strength of their familial bond and their interdependent destinies. The New York Times[11] observed that the series is "a celebration of the power of African American women to nurture family, even in the direst circumstances. The series’ title refers to the mitochondrial DNA...Through this scientific metaphor, the series commemorates the continuity of African American womanhood from one generation to another...The series also underscores the role played by women of color in the struggle for equality and justice. Historically, African American women were marginalized within mainstream feminism. Nevertheless, they were able to turn to and embolden each other in the face of prejudice, even before the advent of the modern feminist movement."[12]

"White Shoes" (2012–2021)

[edit]
From Her Body Sprang Their Greatest Wealth (2013), from the series White Shoes, at the National Gallery of Art's showing of Afro-Atlantic Histories in Washington, DC in 2022

The White Shoes series portrays the history of slavery in New York through a series of nude self-portraits taken in former locations significant to the slave trade. The series also engages with representation of the black female body.[7][8]

Faustine first had the idea for the series in 1991, during the excavation of the African Burial Ground in Manhattan.[13] She began to work on "White Shoes" as a graduate student. Influenced by Lorna Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems, Faustine began the series as her thesis project in 2012 and continued to add to it over the subsequent three years.[7]

This work is based on Faustine's research on the history of slavery in the five boroughs of New York City, including slave burial grounds, slave markets, slave owning farms, and the landing spots of slave ships. Standing in white shoes, she reminds viewers how often African-Americans must adopt white culture. Posing on a wooden box at locations around New York where slaves were once sold, "baring her flesh to history, she conveys the most fundamental horror of the slave trade, the way it reduced people to mere bodies, machines of muscle."[14]

Her 2016 exhibition at Smack Mellon was reviewed extensively. The New Yorker's Alexandra Schwartz wrote, "Faustine's photos serve to mark the places that belong to a history too often hidden from view, whether by design, or neglect, or the ever-frenetic pace of change inherent to life in New York."[15] In 2024, the series was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum.[8]

Personal life

[edit]

Faustina was a single mother to one daughter, born in the late 2000s.[4][16] According to the DNA-testing company African Ancestry, Faustine found she had Bubi, Hausa, Fulani, and Tikar heritage from her mother's side, and Mandinka and Nigerian Yoruba heritage on her father's side.[6] Faustina died March 20, 2025, age 48.[4]

Exhibitions

[edit]

Solo exhibitions

[edit]

"My Country" (2016)

[edit]

"My Country" was Faustine's first solo exhibition, held at Baxter St. Camera Club of New York from December 8, 2016 to January 14, 2017.[22] The exhibition presented works from the "White Shoes" series, as well as a series of photographs of monuments. The monuments, including the Statue of Liberty and The Lincoln Memorial, are pictured with a black line slicing through the image. The Village Voice wrote that her work was "a frank rendering of America's disgraceful and all-too-buried legacy of marginalization" and explained the impact of the monument photographs: "the graphic interruption stands for the scores of mistreated Americans for whom such structures and their supposed representation of the common good have remained inaccessible"[23]

Group exhibitions

[edit]

Awards

[edit]

Collections

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Nona Faustine". artspacenewhaven.org. Retrieved March 2, 2019.
  2. ^ "Brooklyn Museum". www.brooklynmuseum.org. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  3. ^ "CMOA Collection". collection.cmoa.org. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Greenberger, Alex (March 21, 2025). "Nona Faustine, Photographer Who Pictured Enslavement's Unseen Histories and Black Women's Perseverance, Dies at 48". ARTnews.com. Retrieved March 21, 2025.
  5. ^ Kim, Demie (December 26, 2016). "New York Artist Nona Faustine Exposes the City's Slaveholding Past". Artsy. Retrieved March 2, 2019.
  6. ^ a b c d "Nona Faustine by Carla J. Williams". BOMB Magazine. Retrieved March 24, 2025.
  7. ^ a b c d e f "Nona Faustine's Nude Self Portraits Expose New York's History of Slavery". Broadly. Retrieved November 28, 2016.
  8. ^ a b c Pontone, Maya (March 23, 2025). "Nona Faustine, Whose Defiant Self-Portraits Confronted Centuries of Violence, Dies at 48". Hyperallergic. Retrieved March 24, 2025.
  9. ^ "» "Nona Faustine," The Whiteness Issue". theracialimaginary.org. Retrieved March 2, 2019.
  10. ^ "MONUMENTAL: Nona Faustine Reveals Historical DistortionS In Public Space". archive.pinupmagazine.org. Retrieved March 27, 2025.
  11. ^ Berger, Maurice (July 11, 2017). "Three Generations of Black Women in Family Photos". Lens Blog. Retrieved December 3, 2022.
  12. ^ ""In Brooklyn, Three Generations of Family Photos"". New York Times. Retrieved July 11, 2017.
  13. ^ Smyth, Diane. "Nona Faustine unpacks the dark and hidden history of America". 1854 Photography. Retrieved March 24, 2025.
  14. ^ Jones, Jonathan (August 5, 2015). "The scars of America: why a nude artist is taking a stand at slavery sites". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
  15. ^ "A Living Monument to the Ghosts of American Slavery". The New Yorker. December 28, 2016. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
  16. ^ a b Ashcraft, Kady Ruth (March 7, 2024). "In 'White Shoes,' Nona Faustine's New York". The Cut. Retrieved March 24, 2025.
  17. ^ "Making Them Known Artspace". Artspace, New Haven.
  18. ^ Curl, Julia (June 26, 2021). "Nona Faustine's Family Album". Hyperallergic. Retrieved March 24, 2025.
  19. ^ Sneed, Pamela. "Nona Faustine". 4columns.org. Retrieved March 24, 2025.
  20. ^ Thomas, Alexandra M. (June 18, 2024). "Nona Faustine Unearths New York's Buried History of Slavery". Hyperallergic. Retrieved March 24, 2025.
  21. ^ Pockros, Alana (March 7, 2024). "Nona Faustine: She's Putting Herself in Their Places". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved March 24, 2025.
  22. ^ "Nona Faustine Exhibition". Baxter St. November 7, 2016. Retrieved March 12, 2017.
  23. ^ "Nona Faustine: My Country". Village Voice. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
  24. ^ Foundation, Ford. "Ford Foundation Announces Opening of Its Art Gallery Focused on Social Justice, Offers Details of Inaugural Exhibitions". www.prnewswire.com. Retrieved March 2, 2019.
  25. ^ "Harvard's Complicit History with Slavery". Hyperallergic. February 26, 2019. Retrieved March 2, 2019.
  26. ^ "Exhibition Review: Refraction: New Photography of Africa and its Diaspora". Musee. April 27, 2018. Retrieved June 7, 2018.
  27. ^ "MAMI". The Knockdown Center. Retrieved March 12, 2017.
  28. ^ "Race & Revolution: Exploring Racial Injustices Through Art | Governors Island". Governors Island. Retrieved March 12, 2017.
  29. ^ "The Future is Forever: Ten Years of the ICP-Bard MFA Program". International Center of Photography. February 23, 2016. Retrieved March 12, 2017.
  30. ^ Nietzel, Michael T. "American Academy in Rome Announces Winners of the 2024-25 Rome Prize". forbes.com. Forbes.
  31. ^ "Recipients to Date". Anonymous Was A Woman. Retrieved July 27, 2018.
  32. ^ "Inaugural Recipients of BRIC's $100,000 Colene Brown Art Prize Announced". Artforum. October 2, 2019. Retrieved March 27, 2025.
  33. ^ "Audio Stop 956". www.nga.gov. Retrieved May 20, 2023.
  34. ^ "Brooklyn Museum". www.brooklynmuseum.org. Retrieved May 20, 2023.
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nona_Faustine&oldid=1282666906"