Go Girls

by R.C. Baker

March 15th, 2007 6:51 PM

Ifétayo Abdus-Salam's Pam Grier Courtesy United Black Girls United Black Girls Rush Arts 526 West 26th Street Through March 31

Omya Alston's Stereotype Mirror (2003) puts the viewer on the business end of some verbal pimp-slapping: Your reflection appears only in the unfrosted areas of the mirror, letter-shaped sections that spell out such epithets as "project ho," "chicken head," and "ghetto bitch," culminating in the lower right corner with "welfare queen." Posing as Pam Grier totally Coffy'd-out with a pump-action shotgun, huge spherical afro, and glittering hoop earrings, Ifétayo Abdus-Salam uses self-portrait photos to ask, "Who's the fairest of them all?" Continuing with appropriations of the rappers Lil' Kim and Trina, scantily clad and progressively blonder, Abdus-Salam embodies various ideals of contemporary female beauty. Felicia D. Megginson's drawings twist jet-black hair into symbols of obsession—one 'do is relaxed into a massive pompadour, others are twisted into sex organs, a black-power fist, a pair of hands gripping prison bars, and dollar signs on a gold-leaf ground. With Uzi Coozie (2007) Heather Hart turns ideas of femininity, wholesome crafts, and domesticity upside-down with her pistols and automatic rifles covered in crocheted "cozies" and suspended from the ceiling. The anger in this show is matched by sharp wit, and Hart's disturbing installation of "concealed" weapons reveals that happiness is definitely not a warm gun.