Chase-Riboud was nineteen when she created her first lost-wax bronze casting at the American Academy in Rome, establishing a lifelong relationship with both the technique and the city. She began adding fiber to her sculptures a decade later in an attempt to reverse the properties of materials: making metal look soft and delicate and fiber appear ridged and hard. The sculpture may be shown in two configurations: as you see it here (The Albino) or with its arms upstretched to the ceiling (All That Rises Must Converge/Black). Both names have literary resonances. The former is the title of a poem by the artist and the latter is a reference to a 1965 short story about race and class by the Southern writer Flannery O’Connor.
Gallery label from "Collection 1940s—1970s", 2019
