Open Casket By Aruna D'souza Analysis

Feminism. Politics. Photography. These three subjects can be discussed and sorted separately, but Aruna D’Souza’s talk revolves around the idea of how feminism is a politics and a practice that can cut across a bunch of different identities that goes beyond the concept of what we know as gender. Also, the issue of race and how that affects art became the main discussion point of this lecture. The title of the talk uses the term of photography, though D’Souza suggested that she could have named it as image-making, art, writing, or just being human in the intersectional field. She stated that the topic of politics of the time from the election to the now has caused the purpose of image-making to become more important than ever for artists to open up the conversation for diverse ideas.
The painting represents the history of threats and deaths that young African-Americans have faced in our society and the results of this injustice. D’Souza describes how the painting faced backlash due to the fact that the artist, Dana Schutz, was a young white woman, which caused many to say that it was “inappropriate appropriation” of a display of “black pain” that invites spectacle. By spectacle, she meant that Schultz was using an African-American’s death for her artwork to cause controversy, raising the awareness of her work. Then, she moved over to the real photos of Emmett Till’s casket as a comparison to how his death was way more meaningful than just an inspiration for a painting. Using this as a comparison she stated the question: Who has the right to paint this history? The answer to this question is uncertain, though we should not tell an artist what they can or cannot create, which is censoring their