The first thing I noticed when I walked into the gallery was the towering sculpture to my right, which was easily eight feet or so. My first impression was that it seemed to be a hut made completely out of straw, as my eyes were drawn first to the enormously disproportionate body that tapered at the waist. As my eyes traveled higher, I realized it was a woman (as I noticed her breasts) and that her head was a pot. I also noticed that the material used to construct each half of her body was different: the skirt was made of straw and the upper body was made of a harder, black substance that seemed to be clay.
Another sculpture in the gallery had a pear-shaped body. This reminds me of sculptures I studied in my high school Art History class that were produced in earlier civilizations, where women were sculpted or painted with think hips and breasts to show fertility. This hourglass figure is represented in Leigh’s work and insinuates what traditionally a woman stands for – fertility and childbirth. Not only do the shapes of the sculptures give this connotation, the heads do as well. In the first sculpture, the head is in the shape of a pot, and in the second, the head forms a longer vase of sorts. In many cultures, especially those centered in villages, women with pots on their heads (usually intended to carry water) were seen as signs of femininity and balance. Perhaps this was what Simone Leigh was aiming for when incorporating all these historically feminine symbols in her pieces of art.
In both sculptures the heads do not have eyes. Eyes in books or art pieces are usually regarded as the “window to one’s soul.” They can express raw emotions or contribute to a piece of someone’s identity. By taking away eyes from her sculptures, Simone Leigh essentially takes away the identity of the women. This may be a method she uses to take tropes or stereotypes of race and gender found in the statues and broaden it to incorporate values in the real world.