Digital Collage Portraiture: An Artful Self-Inquiry Into the Archive

Abstract

How can visual methods and aesthetics be used to present, or rather (re)present historical Black women’s perspectives? What possibilities might the arts open for archival research with/about Black women? Theoretically grounded in (re)membering, and guided by portraiture, historiartgraphy, and Black women collage artists, this paper explores these questions, offering digital collage portraiture as artful self-inquiry into the archive. To illustrate its methodological utility, the author presents two digital collage portraits that reflect the process, tensions, temporality, and contexts in which they were created. In summary, digital collage portraiture enables endarkened, feminist, and culturally situated ways of seeing, knowing, being, and becoming in archival research. It bridges the gap between raw archival data, ineffable knowledge, interiority, visual analysis, and aesthetics. In this way, digital collage portraiture as artful inquiry can serve as a medium for meaning/sense/worldmaking for Black women, across time.

Keywords

digital collage Portraiture archival research Black women

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