Iris Kensmil (b. 1970)

In 2004, Iris Kensmil started actively making work about the emancipation struggle and about “Black Consciousness”. Unlike many other artists, Kensmil does not look back at a colonial or slavery past, nor at so-called “roots” that are burdensome for many people. She prefers to work on change by making art linked to recent and past developments in black emancipation. She wants to give contemporary black people who distinguish themselves in emancipatory politics, culture and anti-racist or Black Lives Matter protests, a place in galleries and museums, and thus in art history.

Kensmil created the installation “Study in Black Modernity” especially for the Van Abbe Museum in 2017. Besides charcoal drawings of abstract patterns and classic portraits of activists and black opinion makers, the work also contains a number of books and publications by thinkers and writers who, according to Kensmil, have distinguished themselves in this Black Modernity. Think of people like Anton de Kom, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and Gloria Wekker, but also of texts by Chuck D, leader of the American activist hip-hop formation Public Enemy.

At the end of the installation hangs a charcoal drawing called Lezende (Reading) (2017). It has never been stated that this Lezende (Reading) from 2017 is a study for the work Lezende (Reading) from 2020, but the two works are unmistakably related. The same lady, the same clothes and the same concentrated reading attitude.

In art history, a woman reading is a recurring theme. Women reading in art even has its own Wikipedia page, including works by Monet, Fragonard and of course Vermeer. Reading, or watching a woman reading, is associated with a certain intimacy, where pleasure, knowledge and perhaps a love affair are literally in the hands of the reader. The latter in the form of a love letter.

The nice thing is that upon first viewing Kensmil’s Reading, viewers have indicated that they associated the woman reading with Amanda Gorman, who recited The Hill we Climb during Biden’s inauguration. Even though the lady does not resemble Amanda Gorman at all, who moreover wore a yellow dress, we cannot help but get the impression that Kensmil would not disapprove of that association. With her moving poem, Gorman could easily fit in the new Canon of black opinion makers that Kensmil likes to put in the spotlight.