I am Black, I am Black, I am Dangerously Black

1973

Camille Billops

(American, b. 1939)

Culture

Medium

etching and aquatint with chine collé on Arches wove paper

Measurements

Platemark: 30.1 x 43 cm (11 7/8 x 16 15/16 in.); Sheet: 56.5 x 76 cm (22 1/4 x 29 15/16 in.)

Credit Line

Alma and Robert D. Milne Fund 2022.96

State

state IV/IV

Edition

Edition of 20

Impression

15/20

This artwork is known to be under copyright.

Location

Not on view

Did You Know?

Camille Billops was one of many artists who worked with master printer Robert Blackburn in his New York print shop. She trained there with artist Romare Bearden the year this print was made.

Description

This print is one of many works in which Camille Billops explored the experiences and intersections of Blackness and womanhood. A nude woman appears in an imaginary landscape, evoking the long tradition of this subject throughout art history, but with a geometricized style meant to reference artworks encountered during the artist's travels throughout Africa several years before. Its title suggests Billops’s frustration with power struggles encountered while negotiating a place within the New York art world of the 1960s and '70s.