“Throughout Simone Leigh’s 2023 exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum, several visual
motifs and themes within her works kept reappearing. These themes suggested the idea of the
black woman as an intertemporal sempiternal being. Leigh created several forms of the black
woman that were visually monumental, almost to the point of a commemorative statue that is
somewhat modernist in concept. These works visually were heavily inspired by cultural African
forms such as the D’mba Headdress, or West African bust (Figure 1). One of the main themes
displayed in the exhibition was the idea of the black woman as a nurturing and intellectual vessel
or an architectural being through a skeuomorphic lens, with other objects to support this idea.
The exhibit had a contemplative atmosphere that helped produce a meditative frame of
mind while viewing the works. Many of the works instead of being close to each other, or in a
sequential row to be viewed, were instead spaced out, often occupying their own sections of the
rooms placed in. This spacing helped give the viewer time to deeply think on what lay in front of
them without being overwhelmed, or uninterested because the work in front of them was
substantial enough to view on its own (Figure 2).

The placement of lighting within the exhibit
also greatly accentuated the colors and primary features within the works. It helped add to the
harmony of the spacing of all the pieces displayed. Leigh presented African sculpture inspired
Afrocentric depictions of black women as shelter-like objects, or symbols to be engulfed in or
protected by.

The first piece featured in the beginning of the exhibit titled Cupboard (Figure 3)
emulated a voluminous women’s dress. It was massive in stature with a chalk white cowrie shell,
a common motif in Leigh’s work, on the top and light brown raffia palms ballooning from below
the shell. The physical structure of the sculpture created an image that resembled a shell sitting
upon a bell shaped haystack, or even a head peeking out of one.

According to the work’s plaque description (Figure 4),

Leigh “pointed to the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition, which established
the hut within a colonial iconography” when creating this piece. Within this exposition, France
mounted the hut along with other significant cultural items from different colonized countries to
display the vast expanse of cultures France’s imperialism had reached and was then in control of
as a form of shared culture immersion and assimilation. In the context of this work by Leigh, she
utilized the imagery of the hut to create a sense of “gathering places or dwellings” according to
Figure 3. The work signifies a divine energy, which the cowrie shell is often representative of,
while also giving a sense of shelter for one to reside in, like a cupboard for a small child or a hut
for communal gathering.

The series of three bronze works in the third room of the exhibit titled Vessel (Figure 5),
Bisi (Figure 6), and Herm (Figure 7), all continued the idea of the black woman as a structural
being.

All three had a structured architectural elements to them, with Vessel having an
Afrocentric asphalt black eyeless female figure with a permed hairstyle similar to that of a
stereotypical 1960s housewife, and an exaggeratedly elongated concave torso standing on one
right foot. Bisi featured another eyeless female figure in asphalt black, but as an armless bust, cut
off at the shoulder with close cut hair. The half below the torso of this work had a semi cylinder
shaped like a skirt that is said to be able to enclose “Leigh’s own body” (Hampton, 2023) within
it. The last work featured in this series Herm (Figure 7) displays another figure asphalt black
female figure, eyeless as well, with their armless torso attached to a pedestal, a small almost scar
like slit in the middle, and one slightly bent leg perched out behind them. Of all the three Bisi
was the most visually striking of them all however, and resonated with the concept of the black
woman as a shelter. The structure of the skirt was built wide and long enough to shelter over a
small human being, as if being engulfed in one’s womb.
Through this exhibit the idea of intertemporality within art and overall the black woman,
and how a modernist view of certain cultural views in art can be translated in a contemporary
way was expressed. The architectural formatting of the works evoked a sense of meditation on
how in the outside world the black woman should be perceived by those who are not, and
highlighted the structural imagery of the essence of a black woman.”

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Thank you for your contribution, Ambe!