Memory Test: Free, White & Plastic (#114)

Howardena Pindell American

Not on view

In this work, Pindell adhered hundreds of dots punched out of brightly painted sheets of paper to painted supports, adding scraps of punched paper, painted nails, and even a plastic toy monkey. Not even the underlying grids, created with string, succeed in disciplining the chaotic, riotous sprawl.


Pindell was encouraged in her use of aggregation after traveling in 1973 and 1977 to Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal, where the technique was associated with both ritual and empowerment. She took the 1973 trip with Lowery Stokes Sims, then an assistant curator at The Met, who purchased this work for its collection.

Memory Test: Free, White & Plastic (#114), Howardena Pindell (American, born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1943), Cut and pasted and painted punched paper, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, ink, thread, nails, mat board, spray adhesive and plastic on cardboard

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Memory Test: Free, White & Plastic (#114), Howardena Pindell (American, born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1943), Cut and pasted and painted punched paper, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, ink, thread, nails, mat board, spray adhesive and plastic on cardboard
Memory Test: Free, White & Plastic (#114), Howardena Pindell (American, born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1943), Cut and pasted and painted punched paper, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, ink, thread, nails, mat board, spray adhesive and plastic on cardboard

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