Black Drawings

The 111 works that make up Black Drawings are arranged in a grid eight drawings high and fourteen wide. Each portrait, captured in India ink, depicts a Black man or woman, young or old, with a unique expression and hairstyle or head covering. The ‘bleeding’ of the ink lends intensity and depth to the heads, while some retain a sketch-like or nearly abstract quality. In some cases, a few lines are enough to conjure an expressive face. Dumas found inspiration for this series of heads in her own archive of images. She described the close-up portraits as ‘images that combine intimacy (or the illusion of it) with a feeling of discomfort.’ And indeed: the countless eyes staring back at us evoke anonymity more than closeness.

There is a notable lack of title or caption here, while these often provide direction when interpreting her work. Because the portrait subjects remain anonymous, one quickly begins to view this collection of individuals as a group of strangers. It takes effort to focus separately on each and every face and to remember its individuality. In this sense, Black Drawings refers to ethnographic photography in which individual people are reduced to examples of a type.

It is possible to consider the works in relation to Dumas’ childhood in South Africa during the apartheid era. She is responding to the stereotypical image of ‘a black’ and how people of colour were perceived in a (racist) society. The piece of slate at the lower left could refer to that stereotype: it is an object that is merely black, with no distinguishing features, as impersonal and cold as the world and worldview reflected in the drawings. 

At the top right, a young and presumably white girl (could this be a self-portrait?) covers her face with her hand – a gesture that could express either shame or disgust. Shouldn’t we be ashamed of a world that categorises people by type rather than seeing them as individuals? While Dumas harbours no illusions that her art will right any wrongs, her work continues to ask these kinds of critical questions.