Installation view: Renée Cox: Roots Returned, Cathouse Proper, New York, 2019. Photo: Dario Lasagni.
Sometimes it takes years to fully appreciate the importance of a work of art, to evaluate what impact it might induce, and to see it in the context of a legacy that has yet to be realized. So it is with Renée Cox’s monumental black and white photo diptych, Origin, created in 1993. Initially only the left half, a towering nude full-length self-portrait entitled Yo Mama, was exhibited. It features a thoroughly self-confident Cox in the buff, wearing high heels, and holding her squirming young son. The right half of the diptych is a nude portrait of a beautiful young Black man entitled David. Posed as Michelangelo’s marble statue, sporting a big Afro and holding a worn book aloft. “David,” like Cox, gazes intently out of the frame to engage the viewer. While each photograph is editioned separately, together they comprise the diptych Origin, never exhibited until now. The pair is reunited on the occasion of Renée Cox: Roots Returned, and inaugurates the return of Cathouse Proper’s “solo-solo show” program.
