Hagar’s Dress

From the Artist

When I arrived [at Brandywine Workshop and Archives, Philadelphia] I had a very loose concept of what I wanted to produce. I have been actively working on and toward a series of work involving the garment (i.e., the dress shape and form and the jacket). Each exemplifies the metaphor that the garment represents—that of identity.

This print, Hagar’s Dress, is part of The Middle Passage Suite, [a] series of work examining the  “Crossings” that my ancestors made as well as my crossing over into middle age. Hagar was the “slave” woman that begat Abraham a child because his wife Sarah was unable to conceive. All that is history and part of Biblical record. What Hagar represents to me is the [inspiration], spirit, struggle and creativity in survival. For me the dress also symbolizes the beginning and the carrying on of one’s history. The figures I carved in order to create a repetitive pattern that represents the human beings that survived as well as those who did not. The colors are symbolic as well, blue, yellow/gold, and black-brown. The dress shape is meant to read as pre/post colonial—all women.
_{—From Brandywine Workshop and Archives records}

As a mature artist still evolving, I see my art as experimental and collaborative. I’ve always been a narrative artist and my work is about my experiences as an African American female artist. It is very personal, yet the truths revealed are universal. I want the viewer to make a connection with their own life when they encounter my art. That is my intention as an artist. 
_{—From https://foundwork.art/artists/janetpickett, accessed 7-14-2021}

Through this depiction of silhouettes, Pickett references the famous diagram by British abolitionist William Elford that exposed the inhumane conditions enslaved people endured on ships that traversed the Atlantic. The print shows how 487 Africans, depicted as repeating silhouettes wearing nothing but undergarments, were packed into various parts of slave ships to maximize traders’ profits. The print was widely circulated, generated an uproar, and aided abolitionists in their work. 
_{—From https://collections.telfair.org/objects/8498/hagars-dress?ctx=4c1e3340f7875945943e4307fd5301c4dc81a4df&idx=1, accessed 10-8-2021}