Credit: Three Women of America, 1990. Serigrapph A/P 9/30. Courtesy of Hampton University Museum.
ELIZABETH CATLETT
Solidarity
Elizabeth Catlett uses women’s bodies to make a statement about women and race. Catlett created Three Women of America in 1900. The painting presents three women from different ethnic backgrounds overlapping one another. The women’s race-ethnicities appear to be white, black and Latina. The white woman is on the left, the Latina woman is on the right, and they are blending into the black woman, who is in the middle. Each of the women shares the same eye color, the white woman’s right eye makes the black woman’s left eye, and the Latinas woman’s right eye makes the black woman’s left eye. In addition to the eyes of the women overlapping, the skin tones do too as well.
In addition to the women’s faces overlapping their arms are intertwined as they are holding one another. The women are wearing multi-colored shirts each with a different pattern or design.
Catlett created this piece around the time the third wave feminist movement was underway. Unlike the previous first and second wave movements, the third wave feminist movement expanded its ideas and opened up to the empowerment of women in different classes and racial and ethnic backgrounds.
These women blend into a unified woman, portraying the idea that women from different races are more alike than not, and should not let race separate them from one another. By bringing together these three women, Catlett sends a strong message that if only women can set aside the difference of skin tone the feminist movement could be a lot stronger. "Catlett’s idea of all these women blending is the idea that race should not be another barrier, in addition to gender; that can hold them back from achieving their deserved rights as women. Blending is more than just coming together as different races it is about coming together to create one unified group, where skin color is not a factor, in the fight for women’s rights." Catlett reminds viewers "race is a social construction whose artificial divisions blur in the real world."
