Renee Cox: American Family

An autobiographical and transitional work, American Family explores the various roles Renée Cox has assumed throughout her life: Catholic schoolgirl, wife, mother, woman who knows and shows her sexual pleasure, and black woman artist contesting an art history that has all but excluded her race. A cross between Diary of a Mad Housewife and The Sensual Woman, American Family is a veritable minefield of taboos, revealed by the miscegenated family album and the erotic display of the artist's own beautiful body. Compartmentalized into sections called Family Room, Erotica, and the Salon, American Family accompanied an exhibition which included a video projection, large scale Cibachrome prints mounted on aluminum, a series of smaller black-and-white diptychs and triptychs, as well as photographs culled from the artist's own family album. Essay by Jo Anna Isaak.