Yo Mama's Last Supper is a work of art, made in 1996 by Jamaican-American artist Renée Cox. It is a large photographic montage of five panels, each 31 inches square, depicting photographs of 11 black men, a white Judas and a naked black woman (the artist's self-portrait)[1] posed in imitation of Leonardo da Vinci's 1490s painting The Last Supper. Cox is pictured naked and standing, with her arms reaching upwards, as Jesus.[2]
In 2001, the piece was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art as part of an exhibition called Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers. New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was offended by the work and called for the creation of a panel to create decency standards for all art shown at publicly funded museums in the city.[3][4] Art scholar Camille Paglia, however, said in 2012 that "Renée Cox is an important black photographer and a performance artist, who uses herself... This, I think, is a serious statement, this work. It might be shocking to have a nude black woman in the position of Christ, but I think, as a whole, the work had some dignity, it had gravitas."[5]
The work has also been included in other exhibitions about artistic depictions of The Last Supper, in locations such as the Aldrich Contemporary Art MuseuminRidgefield, Connecticut; Oratorio di San Ludovico, a 17th-century Catholic church in Venice, Italy;[3] and a gallery in Jakarta, Indonesia.[6]
|
| |
|---|---|
| Paintings (by artist) |
|
| Paintings (by location) |
|
| Sculptures (by sculptor) |
|
| Other media (by location) |
|
| |
 | This photography-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
