Possibly a Zulu Nurse holding a White Baby

Inscriptions

Printed, in gold ink, lower left: E.W.R. Pearse; printed, in gold ink, lower right: LADYSMITH / AND / DUNDEE.

Label

Imagery of Black women caring for white children signals histories of racial slavery and colonialism. In Apartheid South Africa, Black women were forced to become domestic laborers for white families. Despite the caretaking role African women played for white children, they were simultaneously denigrated as mothers and considered unfit. Denied access to tending to their own children and homes, Black domestic workers in South Africa and beyond have sustained white families for several generations. Their labor is overlooked and underappreciated, but their care work has been vital to the prosperity of bourgeois families. One might be tempted to look away from this image, but it is included in this exhibition as a testament to the Black domestic labor often written out of history or appropriated into narratives that justify their oppression.

From the 2023 exhibition Homecoming: Domesticity and Kinship in Global African Art, curated by Alexandra Thomas, Curatorial Research Associate

Course History

WGSS 30.05/LACS 36, Maid in America, Francine A'Ness, Spring 2021

ANTH 55.01, Anthropology of Global Health, Anne Sosin, Fall 2022

Anthropology 55.01, Anthropology of Global Health, Anne Sosin, Spring 2023

First Year Student Enrichment Program – Cultures, Identities and Belongings, Colleen Lannon, Summer 2023

First Year Student Enrichment Program - Cultures, Identities and Belongings, Mokhtar Bouba, Summer 2023

Philosophy 1.11, Art: True, Beautiful, Nasty, John Kulvicki, Summer 2023

Writing 2.05, Why Write, Anyway?, Erkki Mackey, Fall 2023

Writing 5.24, Photographic Representations, Amanda Wetsel, Fall 2023

Writing 5.25, Photographic Representations, Amanda Wetsel, Fall 2023

Exhibition History

Homecoming: Domesticity and Kinship in Global African Art, Harteveldt Family Gallery, Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery, and Northeast Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 22, 2023–May 25, 2024.

Provenance

Jacaranda Tribal, New York, New York; sold to present collection, 2019.

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Subjects