Betye Saar: Serious Moonlight

Rarely seen installation works that exemplify this pioneering artists critical focus on Black identity and Black feminism Showcasing a lesser-known aspect of Saars art, Betye Saar: Serious Moonlight provides new insights into her explorations of ritual, spirituality and cosmologies, as well as themes of the African diaspora. Featured here are significant installations created by Saar from 1980 to 1998, including Oasis (1984), a work that will be reconfigured at ICA Miamis Saar exhibition for the first time in more than 30 years. With compelling scholarship and rich illustrationcombining new installation photography and archival materialthe monograph provides a fresh look at this significant artists critical and influential practice. Betye Saar: Serious Moonlight reinforces and celebrates Saars standing as a visionary artist, storyteller and mythmaker, and the ongoing significance and relevance of her work to the most pressing issues in America today. Betye Saar (born 1926) is renowned for pioneering Black feminism and West Coast assemblage in her visionary artistic practice, through dense, complexly referential objects. For over six decades, Saars work has led dialogues on race and gender, reflecting changing cultural and political contexts. Most recently, solo presentations have been hosted by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Saars work was prominently featured in We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 196585 at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, and in Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at Tate Modern, London, which traveled to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Brooklyn Museum; The Broad, Los Angeles; and the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.