Dindga McCannon

Ima: Real Estate Mogul (Harlem Women's Series)

Dindga McCannon created the radiant portrait Ima: Real Estate Mogul from the Harlem Women’s Series by first stitching material together with a sewing machine and then using more traditional painting techniques to render a portrait of Ima, a woman from Harlem who was a real estate developer from the 20th century. As with other works in the series, McCannon completes the portrait by hand beading a personal and cultural iconography of signs and symbols around the edges of the canvas. The work is spiritual in the sense that  it has an energy that comes from its directness and from the human hand. Most of the figures represented in the artist’s Harlem Women’s Series have been lost in history. She is bringing them back, celebrating them through quilt-like portraiture as business women or as musicians, which earlier in the 20th century was rare. She is celebrating the fact that these women were able to break through as artists. Because they were able to break through, that opened the door just a little so that she, as a visual artist, could make art too.