Sunset Gates, 2020
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
64 x 94 x 1 ½ inches (framed)
Collection of the artist

As an extension of her engagement with poetry and prose in her visual art, Harriet Bart often creates erasure poems like the one on display here. For the artist and many others, this practice of obscuring words from an existing text is often a call for reexamination. 

In this painting, Bart has removed words from “The New Colossus,” the famous poem displayed on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty (1903). Written by Jewish-American poet Emma Lazarus, the words have come to stand as a promise of welcome and protection to those coming to American shores seeking refuge.

Bart's erasure of words from Lazarus’ sonnet suggests its message to be under threat of obliteration, while the knotted chords call for its remembrance.  These chords reference quipu, a system of tying strings with knots used by the Inca and other ancient civilizations of Andean South America for record-keeping and communication.

Exhibition:

• Material Matters / October 18 - November 19, 2021 / Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art, Minneapolis MN

• Abracadabra and Other Forms of Protection / February 2 - November 29, 2020 / Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis MN