Chain Around My Neck
Paula Mans
Acrylic and Paper Collage on Wood Panel
30 x 30 in
Paula Mans tells the many stories of the global Black experience
through collage. The artist views collage as emblematic of the
cultural and historical interconnectedness of the African Diaspora.
Just as the dispersed people of the African Diaspora are tied together
by the common thread of ancestry, in collage, small, seemingly
disjointed pieces are fused to communicate one story. In her analog
collage works, Paula draws from portrait photography of people from
across the Diaspora – cutting, deconstructing, layering, bonding, and
resignifying small parts to assemble new faces and forms that
communicate identity and shared experiences.
Paula Mans creates figurative collages that engage in visual discourse
surrounding the (in)visibility and agency of people of African
descent. The artist’s prominent figures are rendered in seemingly
mythic proportions, commanding attention and expressing authority. The
works subvert notions of power through the Gaze. Rather than being
images to be viewed and consumed, the figures look defiantly out onto
the world and the viewer. The figures that the artist constructs do
more than simply exist. They resist and insist.
Paula Mans frequently uses monochrome throughout her work, employing a
range of gray and black tones to express the rich pigments of Black
skin. The figures are often cast against stark, bold, and textured
backgrounds. This heightened contrast plays with notions of
(in)visibility. Traditionally a two-dimensional medium, Paula Mans
inserts textural abstraction and textiles into her collages, lending a
sculptural and painterly quality to her mixed-media analog works.Paula Mans (b. 1986) is a self-taught
painter, collagist, and art
educator based in Washington, DC. While Paula is a native
Washingtonian, she spent many of the formative years of her childhood
and young adulthood living abroad in Tanzania, Mozambique, Eswatini,
and Brazil. Her experiences throughout the African Diaspora shaped her
identity and informed the development of her artistic voice. Living in
Washington, DC and Salvador, Brazil has been particularly impactful
for the artist. Both cities are diasporic meccas for Black cultural
expression. DC (often referred to as Chocolate City) and Salvador
(sometimes called Roma Negra, or Black Rome in Portuguese) are famous
for their prominent and influential Black populations. Nonetheless,
racism and gentrification often render Black people invisible in both
cities. Paula Mans seeks to critically address these pervasive power
structures by amplifying the visibility and agency of the Black figure
in her artistic practice. Her work has been curated into group shows
in Washington, DC, Baltimore, and New York.