Free, White and 21
Howardena Pindell
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Speaking directly to the camera, artist Howardena Pindell recounts her experiences of racism and sexism as a Black woman in the United States, before shifting to play the role of a white woman who claims that Pindell is “paranoid.” This groundbreaking video is a critique of both institutionalized racism and the mostly white Feminist Movement at the time. In 1972, Pindell co-founded A.I.R. Gallery, one of the first artist-run spaces for women in the United States, where the film was first shown in Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States, curated by Ana Mendieta in 1980. This intensely personal and political film, whose title comes from a rebellious catchphrase often heard in Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 1940s, was a stark departure from the abstract works on paper for which Pindell was primarily known.
MEDIUM
Single-channel video, color, sound, 12 minutes 15 seconds
DATES
1980
ACCESSION NUMBER
2020.16
CREDIT LINE
Gift of Garth Greenan
PROVENANCE
By 2018, acquired form the artist by Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, NY; 2020, gift of Garth Greenan to the Brooklyn Museum.
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MUSEUM LOCATION
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