—Renee Cox—
Renee Cox is one of the most controversial African-American artists working today using her own body, both nude and clothed to celebrate black womanhood and criticize a society she often views as racist and sexist.
She was born on October 16, 1960, in Colgate, Jamaica, into an upper middle-class family, who later settled in Scarsdale, New York. Cox's first ambition was to become a filmmaker. "I was always interested in the visual" she said in one interview, "But I had a baby boomer reaction and was into the immediate gratification of photography as opposed to film, which is a more laborious project."
From the very beginning, her work showed a deep concern for social issues and employed disturbing religious imagery. In It Shall be Named (1994), a black man's distorted body made up of eleven separate photographs hangs from a cross, as much resembling a lynched man as the crucified Christ. Source:http://www.reneecox.org
The Signing, on display at Boca Raton Museum of Art, 2020
