Among the exhibits currently running at the Delaware Art Museum is one called "Dark Humor."
This exhibit features 19 works from University of Delaware’s African American permanent collection produced between 1970 and 2008 that explore how contemporary artists use subversive humor to question cultural and racial stereotypes.
The term “black humor” – also known as “dark humor”– was coined in 1935 by surrealist André Breton to designate a subgenre of comedy making light of serious topics otherwise considered taboo.
The show was shaped in part around a piece by Delaware-based artist and University of Delaware professor Peter Williams called “Absolutely Hilarious.”
“It’s about a tintype mammy, with symbols painted on top of her like a little child, you know a little baby because mammies and other iconic symbols that reference this kind of idea that there’s this incongruous relations between black women and white children. So, to me it’s absolutely hilarious,” Williams said.
For this edition of Arts Playlist, Delaware Public Media’s Megan Pauly recently spoke with Williams about the piece, as well as the evolution of his work and its connection to his identity as an African American and the various communities he’s lived in.
Williams is also having some of his recent work relating to a cartoon-ish superhero character called the N-Word published in a new book by Detroit publisher Rotland Press.
During his over 10 years living in Delaware, he’s been largely focusing his work on the complex relationship between African Americans and others in the community.
In late 2014 he painted the cartoon-ish superhero character called the N-Word - an African American with a yellow and red cape - with the intention of creating a provocative dialogue about continuous tensions between police officers and African Americans in Delaware and nationwide.
“Every time I went and looked at the news or got online, there was another name and another name," Williams said. "And finally this was starting to happen to women as well. So I was saddened, remorseful. I didn’t feel responsible, but in some ways I didn’t feel like I was doing enough.”
The N-Word confronts cultural stereotypes, and biases. In one recent painting, Williams paints a police officer eating the N-Word superhero.
“There’s a great painting by Goya of Saturn eating his child, and I’m sort of taking that idea and utilizing it in more recent paintings to sort of show that individuals are eating black people, making them their dinner. Literally," he said.
Delaware Art Museum’s Dark Humor exhibit is up through September 25th. There are several events related to the exhibit coming up, including a discussion of cultural bias in the gallery Friday August25th.
Delaware Public Media' s arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from theDelaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.