Tactile Drawing - Angela Davis #2

Description and Manual

Iris Kensmil
Angela Davis #2 2015
Oil on canvas
110 by 80 cm
Tactile drawing

You are now in a nook of the great hall. A number of tactile drawings can be discovered in this alcove. The originals are on display in the main hall. You could call it the 'women's room', not only because the artists are women, but also because the portraits depict women.

You can remove the tactile drawing from the wall and place it on the desk to discover the portrait.

Pictured is a portrait of a woman. The entire top half of the painting is filled with a large head of black hair. This feels like a circle. Below that circle are the shoulders. The woman wears a jumper or shirt with a V-neck. Now you can probably trace her face too. She has a round chin, her mouth is half-open, and she wears sunglasses. Her eyes are visible behind the coloured glass.

It is a portrait of Angela Davis, born in 1944 in Alabama in the United States. Angela Davis is a prominent activist within the black emancipation movement. She is a philosopher, writer, activist and teaches at several universities in the United States.

Since the time that Davis was wrongfully imprisoned in 1970, the American prison system has been an important focus and study point of hers.

Iris Kensmil, the artist behind this portrait of Angela Davis, said the following:

“I deliberately use a European way of painting light. This gives the people I portray a presence, with which I want to emphasize their importance in a respectful way”.

The large head of hair shows similarities to a halo and the way Saints are depicted.

Text by Fleur Brom, museum teacher at the Van Abbemuseum.