MARY W.D. GRAHAM

Value Test: Brown Paper

2022 – PRESENT
An image of the painting "Bishop" by Mary Graham from the series "Value Test: Brown Paper." The painting depicts an elderly African-American woman with short grey hair painted on a brown paper bag.
An image of the painting "Ward" by Mary Graham from the series "Value Test: Brown Paper." The painting depicts a young African-American woman with long curly brown hair painted on a brown paper bag on a grey background.
An image of the painting "Delaney" by Mary Graham from the series "Value Test: Brown Paper." The painting depicts a young dark-skinned African-American woman with long blue cornrows painted on a brown paper bag.
An image of the painting "Rucker" by Mary Graham from the series "Value Test: Brown Paper." The painting depicts a young light-skinned African-American woman with curly red hair in a bun painted on a brown paper bag.
An image of the painting "Purvis" by Mary Graham from the series "Value Test: Brown Paper." The painting depicts a young African-American woman with black box-braids in a bun painted on a brown paper bag.
An image of the painting "Pinchback" by Mary Graham from the series "Value Test: Brown Paper." The painting depicts an African-American woman with long straightened hair painted on a brown paper bag on a pink background.
An image of the painting "Wheeler" by Mary Graham from the series "Value Test: Brown Paper." The painting depicts a young dark-skinned African-American woman with an afro and her dis-embodied hand painted on a brown paper bag.
An image of the painting "Williams" by Mary Graham from the series "Value Test: Brown Paper." The Painting depicts an elderly light-skinned African-American woman painted on a brown paper bag on a yellow background.

Oil on brown paper bag mounted on hand stretched linen, clear gesso, acrylic pigment.
24 x 48″ – 23 x 48″

ABOUT

Value Test: Brown Paper is a series of portraits depicting fictional Black women rendered in oil on deconstructed brown paper bags mounted on linen. The work makes direct reference to the “paper bag tests” historically conducted amongst the Black upper classes to gauge entry into elite fraternities, social clubs, and events. The test granted access only to those deemed lighter than the brown paper.

The historical reference is the context though which I begin to reflect upon the internalization of Western ideologies about dichotomy; pass and fail, dark and light, powerful and not. The bag here serves as evidence of the arbitrary origins such power dynamics as being within the eye of the beholder, and the more powerful party. Painted straight on, the framing of the portraits foster a stark relationship between viewer and subject, capturing a moment of either recognition, sympathy, or arbitration.

The fictional nature of the portraits means that the work also reflects a process of introspection. Mining the internet for photographs to collage together Photoshop, I created composite portraits to use as reference from which I rendered the women’s likenesses. Through each portrait I ponder the implications of my own intersecting identities — my gender, class, parentage, complexion, the way these identity performances are perceived/racialized in the present, and how they may have also been interpreted through-out time. As much as the work is rooted in history, it is just as much about confronting viewers with questions as a means of sparking a process of healing: What will we do now? This is what happened, now how will we move forward?

ONGOING RESEARCH

Graham, Lawrence Otis. Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class. Harper Collins. 1999

Hochschild, Jennifer; Weaver, Vesla. The Skin Color Paradox and the American Racial Order; Social Forces. Harvard University. 2007

Langston Hughes. Harlem Sweeties; The Collected Works of Langston Hughes. University of Missouri Press. 2002

King-Hammond, Leslie; Saar, Betye. Betye Saar, Colored: Consider The Rainbow. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. 2002

Uzogara, Ekeoma E.; Lee, Hedwig; Abdou, Cleopatra M.; Jackson, James S.
A comparison of skin tone discrimination among African American men: 1995 and 2003; Psychology of Men & Masculinity, vol. 15, Issue 2. American Psychological Association. 2014