“I’m the kind of person who recycles materials,” says the assemblage artist Betye Saar, “but I also recycle emotions and feelings.” Saar’s art—found objects arranged in frames, boxes, and tableaux—can seem as homespun as a folktale, but the tale she tells is shadowed by racial and sexual oppression. In 1972, she made her first politically explicit assemblage, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, which saw the mammy caricature armed with a rifle. Over the following years Saar created other powerful images, and undertook research trips to Haiti, Mexico, and Nigeria. This exhibition focuses on her radical installations, and includes a selection of other important works. —E.C.

Betye Saar: Serious Moonlight
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Institute of Contemporary Art / Miami / Art
Institute of Contemporary Art / Miami / Art
Betye Saar, “Oasis,” 1984. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, L.A.
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