Renée Cox (1960, Colgate, Jamaica) is a provocative artist, photographer, and political activist who fearlessly explores concepts of empowerment, identity, and injustice; often achieved through the striking and controversial use of her own body. Photographing her clothed and nude body serves as a celebration of black womanhood and a critique of a racist and sexist society. She challenges racial and gendered stereotypes by boldly confronting and subverting them. Cox’s photographs are a bold socio-political commentary that challenges entrenched social norms, celebrates black identity, and encourages critical dialogue on race, gender, and empowerment. Cox has explored numerous identities throughout her life: Catholic schoolgirl, wife, mother, woman who knows and shows her sexual pleasure, and black woman artist contesting an art history that has all but excluded her race. A cross between Diary of a Mad Housewife and The Sensual Woman, American Family is a veritable minefield of taboos, revealed by the miscegenated family album and the erotic display of the artist's own beautiful body.

'Baby Back' features Cox poses on a luxurious yellow couch, nude except for red high heels. In her right hand, she holds a whip that references BDSM subcultures as well as its history of enslavement. and presents the viewer with a profile view of her face, raised high in a defiant pose. In using a large-format photograph that presents her as an icon of strength and beauty, Cox engages with self-representation and self-presentation in order to counteract Manet’s Olympia. Cox intentionally adopts the Odalisque pose, the sexually available other of the Orientalist tradition that is usually associated with the white female body. She invokes that dynamic in order to disrupt it, depicting herself as the vessel of power in this image.