Autobiography: Water (Ancestors/Middle Passage/Family Ghosts) 1988

Howardena Pindell made this piece, Autobiography: Water, and it’s like she’s building a story right on the surface. The texture is intense; you can see the layers and the way she’s built it up with different materials. It's like she's not just painting but constructing a memory, a feeling, a whole world. I notice these tiny pieces of what looks like maybe photographs embedded in the blue. They’re like little fragments of a personal history floating in this dreamy, watery space. The color is really striking too, various shades of blue. There's a darker blue, more solid mass to the left, with that odd little ship. Maybe she’s trying to visualize something that can't be fully grasped. I’m reminded of the way Eva Hesse used materials and process to embody the complexity and messiness of being human. With Pindell, like Hesse, the ambiguity is the point. Art is not just about answers, it's about the questions.