Sokari Douglas Camp: Sensational Steel by Susan J. Curtis Unavailable

Sokari Douglas Camp: Sensational Steel opens with an ekphrastic prologue by the artist. Douglas Camp studies a photo of her five-year-old self and her mother, taken in her hometown of Buguma, just after Nigeria established its independence from Britain. Douglas Camp annotates the pieces of her mother's ensemble: “a wrapper of pelete bite, a Kalabari cloth made from imported Indian fabric” (p. 1), Bata sandals from Europe, and a synthetic chiffon top. Douglas Camp writes that her mother's outfit, made up of elements sourced in Nigeria, Asia, and Europe, represents “a Kalabari response to modernity.” Throughout the 86 full-color plates in Susan J. Curtis's monograph, these pieces of clothing consistently reappear, stretched tight or draped over Douglas Camp's life-sized steel sculptures. The artist states, “I make sculpture about my birth country as well as the one where I live, because where ever I am: I am a Kalabari woman”...