id: 161714 accession number: 2000.75 share license status: Copyrighted url: https://clevelandart.org/art/2000.75 updated: 2023-08-23 23:52:11.351000 Man Spirit Mask, 1999. Willie Cole (American, b. 1955). Embossed photoetching hand-colored with lemon juice; photoscreenprint hand-colored with lemon juice; photoetching and woodcut; sheet: 99.8 x 67.5 cm (39 5/16 x 26 9/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund 2000.75 title: Man Spirit Mask title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1999 creation date earliest: 1999 creation date latest: 1999 current location: creditline: John L. Severance Fund copyright: --- culture: America, 20th century technique: embossed photoetching hand-colored with lemon juice; photoscreenprint hand-colored with lemon juice; photoetching and woodcut department: Prints collection: PR - Etching type: Print find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Willie Cole (American, b. 1955) - artist --- measurements: Sheet: 99.8 x 67.5 cm (39 5/16 x 26 9/16 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Artlens Exhibition 2019 opening date: 2019-06-11T04:00:00 Artlens Exhibition 2019. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS --- PROVENANCE --- fun fact: The steam iron is a personal symbol for this artist and it appears in many of his works. digital description: This artwork is composed of three prints, each referencing the artist’s identity as a Black man in America grappling with the legacy of slavery. The central print depicts a ghostly scorch mark made by an iron. This ordinary household tool may reference domestic servitude, but also echoes the shape of ships that carried millions of captive African people to the United States. On the flanking prints, the artist layered the imprint and image of the same iron over his own face, suggesting African masks and scarification rites, and the branding of Black bodies as property. By incorporating the iron imagery onto his own face, Cole suggests that scars from the past can and do affect the present. wall description: Cole created a dialogue between blacks’ ancestral home in Africa and their forced resettlement in America using his self-portrait and a favorite item, the steam iron. In Man, the first panel of this triptych, a photograph of Cole’s face is covered with the embossed pattern of the steam holes of a Proctor Silex iron, a reference to the traditional tribal practice of skin scarification and branding for social identification. In Mask the iron resembles a face and is superimposed atop an inverted image of Cole’s visage; in tribal ritual a mask contains the spirit while the persona of the mask hides the wearer. In Spirit and Mask, irons resemble African tribal war shields and mimic the shape of slave ships as seen from above. Irons and ironing boards are also reminders that generations of African American women have labored as domestics. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Cleveland Museum of Art, “Recent Acquisitions Press Release,” October 6, 2000, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives. page number: Mentioned: p. 3 url: https://archive.org/details/cmapr4354 --- IMAGES