Nona Faustine (American, born 1977). <em>Isabelle, Lefferts House, Brooklyn</em>, 2016. Chromogenic print, sheet: 27 15/16 × 42 in. (71 × 106.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Emily Winthrop Miles Fund, 2017.41b. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: , 2017.41.2_PS9.jpg)

Nona Faustine (American, born 1977). Isabelle, Lefferts House, Brooklyn, 2016. Chromogenic print, sheet: 27 15/16 × 42 in. (71 × 106.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Emily Winthrop Miles Fund, 2017.41b. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: , 2017.41.2_PS9.jpg)

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How were Nona Faustine’s self portraits received by the general public? Does she have other notable pieces?

Through this image, and the others in the White Shoes series, Nona Faustine dismantles the notion of an ever-progressive NYC by posing nude at sites connected to slavery. They include former locations of a burial ground, a slave market, and the home of one of New York's earliest dynastic, slave-owning families, the Lefferts.

Nona Faustine has been showing consistently. She had a critically acclaimed exhibition called "My Country" in New York in 2016. She has received numerous awards, including Anonymous Was a Woman and BRIC’s Colene Brown Art Prize, both in 2019.

The white shoes that she wears in the image and has tied into the waist of her skirt are key iconography across the series, but she hasn't spoken much about their meaning. She prefers to hear viewers' own interpretations.

Through these images, and others in the series, Faustine poses at sites in New York connected to slavery to document histories that are being erased.

Do you have any context to share for Nona Faustine's garb in her self portraits outside Lefferts House?

In particular the children's shoes...

These images are part of her larger White Shoes series that include white shoes in various forms. Faustine doesn't speak about their meaning, however. She prefers that viewers come up with and share their own interpretations.

What did you think they meant when you first saw them?

It made me think of the novel Beloved.

The double edged sword of having children for slave women, knowing what their future holds.

Interesting. A few visitors have also mentioned that the shoes reminded them of lost children.

Motherhood also factors into these images in another very different way. After having her first child, Faustine felt much more confident in her body. She said that her past insecurities now empowered her. And it was after giving birth that she began including her own nude body in her work.

She said: "The nudity is in solidarity with enslaved people and the way we were often put on display when sold or photographed or drawn."

That feels so right.

I am teaching a course on colonial NYC and trying to see how the settler colonial extermination generated solidarity with slaves, across national and racial identities.

Did you see the piece by Nona Faustine in "Half the Picture"? She addresses slavery in New York. The pieces are "Not Gone With The Wind, Lefferts House, Brooklyn"; "Isabelle, Lefferts House, Brooklyn"; and "Lobbying the Gods for a Miracle, Brooklyn".

Isabelle, Lefferts House, Brooklyn

Nona Faustine

Photography

In this series of self-portraits, Nona Faustine inserts her own body into the history and architecture of slavery in New York City. In two photographs, she poses defiantly outside the Lefferts House in nearby Prospect Park. The house was home to descendants of the prominent namesake Dutch landowners and more than a dozen enslaved people between the 1780s and 1827, when slavery was abolished in New York. The interlaced children’s shoes, cast-iron skillet, and smoking revolver add a narrative dimension to the photographs, alluding to the ways Black women experienced and resisted the horrors of enslavement and carry its legacies today.

ARTIST Nona Faustine, American, born 1977

MEDIUM Chromogenic print

DATES 2016

DIMENSIONS sheet: 27 15/16 × 42 in. (71 × 106.7 cm) image: 26 9/16 × 40 in. (67.5 × 101.6 cm) (show scale)

COLLECTIONS Photography

ACCESSION NUMBER 2017.41b

CREDIT LINE Emily Winthrop Miles Fund

PROVENANCE December 19, 2017, purchased from the artist by the Brooklyn Museum.

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MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view

CAPTION Nona Faustine (American, born 1977). Isabelle, Lefferts House, Brooklyn, 2016. Chromogenic print, sheet: 27 15/16 × 42 in. (71 × 106.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Emily Winthrop Miles Fund, 2017.41b. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: , 2017.41.2_PS9.jpg)

IMAGE overall, 2017.41.2_PS9.jpg., 2018

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