Phalia, from the Zabat Series
Phalia (Portrait of Alice Walker) is part of Sulter’s 1989 series Zabat. The series, which Sulter described asa ‘diasporan family portrait’, comprises nine photographic portraits of Black female artists, writers, performers and activists dressed as the Ancient Greek Muses. The artist challenges traditional representations of the Muses in Western art: rather than their usual attributes, these Muses hold objects which interweave the histories from Africa, America and Europe.
In her guise as the Muse, Alice Walker is dressed in a poncho with an African print and carries a bouquet of flowers. Her bouquet recalls the figure of Laure, the Black servant, in Edouard Manet’s 1863 painting Olympia. It also makes reference to Alice Walker’s collection of writings, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983). The poncho and rose-tinted sunglasses reflect the fashions of 1960s flower power. And the colours in the bouquet – red, yellow and green – are the same as those in the Ghanaian flag, a reference to Maud Sulter’s heritage. The Muse’s name, Thalia, is deliberately misspelt in the title of the work. Phalia is in fact the name of a town in Pakistan. Sulter’s play with words points to the interconnectedness between global cultures and geographies.