Ready Mix (Lenticular Animations)

This project contains content that some viewers may find triggering.
The above images are cropped.
Please contact us for more information about these works.

The “real” Aunt Jemima(s) were Nancy Green, Anna Robinson, and Rosie Lee Moore Hall, hired spokeswomen whose work for the Quaker Oats Company ironically didn’t directly involve food. Rather, Green, Robinson, and Hall were affective laborers whose job was to travel around the United States giving big smiles to make customers feel more comfortable with the idea of mass-produced food. The Disorientals connect this job of smiling to the histories of minstrel performance and the exaggerated grotesque smile of blackface. In solidarity with Green, Robinson, Hall, and laborers like them, Disorientalism appropriated canonical genre paintings that depict women working, including two “back of house” and two “front of house” scenes. Connecting to our ongoing exploration of failure in products of popular culture, the disgraceful failure of blackface is shown most forcefully in Just Add Water, when adding water (as the pancake mix recipe instructs) causes the scene to flood, washing away the makeup. Meanwhile, in every scene, viewers see a line near our hairline revealing yellowface underneath. Yellowface, as frequently deployed in previous projects, also appears in Get Both Kinds, in which two “kinds” of laborers are intersectionally exoticized into different laboring roles by categories of race and gender.

In our research into minstrel performance, we learned about a defiant gesture of turning away from the audience while dancing, a common practice at Catherine’s Slip in New York’s Chinatown. More recently, Miles Davis reincarnated this bold turning away by famously playing with his back to the audience. This gesture is explored most directly in I’se In Town, Honey, in which the barmaid turns away defiantly and her reflection turns around and smiles. Ready Mix integrates turning away on a structural level: in order to see the panning 3D effect in the images, audience members must also turn their vision away from the images, while the onlooking bobblehead dolls (the other characters in The Food Groups cast as corporate executives) also nod and shake their heads repeatedly.

The titles in this series are appropriated from Aunt Jemima advertising campaigns.

Just Add Water, 2011
3D lenticular lightbox
42" x 36", framed
Based on the painting The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer (c. 1657-1658).

Get Both Kinds, 2011
3D lenticular lightbox
36" x 42", framed
Based on the painting Odalisque by Ferdinand Roybet (c. 1870).

I’se in Town, Honey, 2011
3D lenticular lightbox
36" x 42", framed
Based on the painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Édouard Manet (1882).

Nothing Could Be Finer, 2011
3D lenticular lightbox
42" x 36", framed
Based on the painting The Moneylender and His Wife by Quentin Metsys (1514).

These works are part of Ready Mix, a chapter in The Food Groups.

This project contains content that some viewers may find triggering.
The above images are cropped.
Please contact us for more information about these works.

The “real” Aunt Jemima(s) were Nancy Green, Anna Robinson, and Rosie Lee Moore Hall, hired spokeswomen whose work for the Quaker Oats Company ironically didn’t directly involve food. Rather, Green, Robinson, and Hall were affective laborers whose job was to travel around the United States giving big smiles to make customers feel more comfortable with the idea of mass-produced food. The Disorientals connect this job of smiling to the histories of minstrel performance and the exaggerated grotesque smile of blackface. In solidarity with Green, Robinson, Hall, and laborers like them, Disorientalism appropriated canonical genre paintings that depict women working, including two “back of house” and two “front of house” scenes. Connecting to our ongoing exploration of failure in products of popular culture, the disgraceful failure of blackface is shown most forcefully in Just Add Water, when adding water (as the pancake mix recipe instructs) causes the scene to flood, washing away the makeup. Meanwhile, in every scene, viewers see a line near our hairline revealing yellowface underneath. Yellowface, as frequently deployed in previous projects, also appears in Get Both Kinds, in which two “kinds” of laborers are intersectionally exoticized into different laboring roles by categories of race and gender.

In our research into minstrel performance, we learned about a defiant gesture of turning away from the audience while dancing, a common practice at Catherine’s Slip in New York’s Chinatown. More recently, Miles Davis reincarnated this bold turning away by famously playing with his back to the audience. This gesture is explored most directly in I’se In Town, Honey, in which the barmaid turns away defiantly and her reflection turns around and smiles. Ready Mix integrates turning away on a structural level: in order to see the panning 3D effect in the images, audience members must also turn their vision away from the images, while the onlooking bobblehead dolls (the other characters in The Food Groups cast as corporate executives) also nod and shake their heads repeatedly.

The titles in this series are appropriated from Aunt Jemima advertising campaigns.

Just Add Water, 2011
3D lenticular lightbox
42" x 36", framed
Based on the painting The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer (c. 1657-1658).

Get Both Kinds, 2011
3D lenticular lightbox
36" x 42", framed
Based on the painting Odalisque by Ferdinand Roybet (c. 1870).

I’se in Town, Honey, 2011
3D lenticular lightbox
36" x 42", framed
Based on the painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Édouard Manet (1882).

Nothing Could Be Finer, 2011
3D lenticular lightbox
42" x 36", framed
Based on the painting The Moneylender and His Wife by Quentin Metsys (1514).

These works are part of Ready Mix, a chapter in The Food Groups.