Still Tickin’: Betye Saar, Ageing and Assemblage

Abstract

Focusing on works by contemporary African-American artist Betye Saar, this paper suggests that in repurposing her great-aunt's possessions Saar revaluates the worth of objects accumulated through ageing. The method of assemblage, which focuses on recycling waste objects and collapsing spatial and temporal boundaries, is in dialogue with the way in which cultural gerontologists are rethinking approaches to waste, decline and experiences of time. In Saar's ‘family shrines’ she memorializes the long life of her great-aunt Hattie Parson Keyes and, in doing so, opens up new avenues of interpretation for Hattie's belongings. As a nonagenarian, Saar's work is receiving renewed interest in the contemporary art world and the latter half of the paper ends on a discussion of Saar's solo show Still Tickin’ (2015). The exhibition used Saar's assemblagist eye to radially rethink the retrospective not as linear progression but as cyclical, thematic and unbeholden to ‘the end’.

Keywords:

• Betye Saar
• contemporary art
• assemblage
• cultural gerontology
• age studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Image can be viewed at: http://jasonschmidtartists.com/v/558/betye-saar/ [Last accessed 18th August 2019]

2 Saar's family history is connected to sites of the Harlem Renaissance via her great-uncle and Hattie's husband, Robert Parson Keyes, who ran the popular restaurant The New Libya in New York before moving to California.

3 Before this, Saar had also used found photographs or ‘instant ancestors’ in her works.

4 Aunt Jemima is a figure Saar has worked with throughout the years, repurposing the image to comment on the violence her use represents.