Kyoto: Positive/Negative

June 1980

Inspired by the Black Power movement and active as a feminist in the New York art world in the 1970s and 1980s, Howardena Pindell favored a craft-inspired aesthetic. Her choice of materials aligned with her commitment to political activism. She was particularly dedicated to fighting the censorship of Black artists that she experienced in the art world as both an artist and a curator.

Reflecting her conceptual and material interest in print- and paper-making, Kyoto: Positive/Negative incorporates personal references into abstract forms inspired by a variety of sources, from scrap paper in her studio to the beads, horns, shells, and hair she studied in African sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum. The use of rice paper here alludes to the artist’s first trip to Japan in 1979, accompanied by her father, with the speckle of vectors and numerical repetition perhaps alluding to his profession as a mathematician.