Malaya's Art Space

black women and self-

recovery

by bell hooks 

​

In a revolutionary manner, black women have utilized mass media (writing, film video, art, etc.) to offer radically different images of themselves. These actions have been an intervention. We have also dared to move out of our “place” (that is away from the bottom of everything, the place this society often suggest we should reside). Moving ourselves from manipulate objects to self-employed subjects, black women have by necessity threatened the status quo. 

 

 

The Oppositional Gaze

 

by bell hooks 

​

By courageously look, we defiantly declared: “Not only will I share? I want my look to change reality.” Even in the worse circumstances of domination, the ability to manipulate one’s gaze in the face of structures of domination that would contain it, opens up the possibility of agency.