Star, 1982

Acrylic, machine-made synthetic fabric, and handwoven synthetic fabric on canvas
© 2024 Emma Amos Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Emma Amos was a pioneering painter, printmaker, and weaver whose works explored questions of race, gender, power, and Black subjectivity. Seeking depictions of empowerment and strength, she collated images of powerful Black figures from sports magazines and used them to produce a group of pioneering figurative paintings in acrylic that incorporated her own brightly colored woven fabric. Star belongs to this body of work. While Amos initially attempted to build her figures out of the fabric, she ultimately resolved to use it as a framing device. Here a leaping body is silhouetted against the textile background, while trailing threads add a sense of depth and flow. The notion of movement, and the body in motion, always remained integral to Amos’s art.