Detail from Lubaina Himid, 3 Women at the Fountain, 1985, originally reproduced in FAN, 2: 8, Autumn 1988, 9.

The artistic practice of gathering and re-using is said to have been invented in Paris in the twenties by Picasso, a Spaniard. ‘Jazz Age’ Paris jumped for joy at the ‘discovery’ of Africa and her artefacts, and stole them. Spain cannot be described without the words ‘Moorish Influence’. The architecture of Gaudi is the nearest European thing to the Great Mosque at Bobo Dioulasso, Upper Volta. From these seemingly odd and disconnected sentences my point is that gathering and re-using has always been part of Black creativity. There has always been Black creativity and it has always been an important influence upon the world despite the work of European Egyptologists who insist that Egypt is not in Africa (LOOK AT A MAP), despite the hooliganism of Napoleon who authorized the smashing of the faces of the Sphinxes to hide their broad flat noses. It is a fact that the well-known Napoleonic chair is simply a copy of an Egyptian chair circa 3000 BCE. Black creativity hits the drawing room! Europeans are stealing then denying the truth.

We need space and permanence: how many collages have been left undone because space under the bed for magazines ran out? However, some of the most significant forms of Black creativity have existed in spite of cramped living conditions, enforced removal, slavery, re-location, highlighting the reality that the creativity is needed to link the past to the future through the difficult present. Black women in America as slaves having been forcibly removed from Africa were dumped, disposed of and dispensed with at will; all sense of past and future should have seemed distant and hopeless, yet they made quilts. The Zamani Soweto Sisters Council came together as machine knitters and needlewomen making garments after working all day in factories for minimal wages. They decided that they could earn more by making their own rules. The quilting they also do has helped publicize the organization and its aims world-wide while helping towards raising funds for the centre. Quilting has its uses even where the manufacture of garments is what really pays the way.

How much does the power to create anew from what is discarded, or what exists as something else, equip the maker with the power to make political change? If you use the images from magazines which are designed to capitalize on capitalism and therefore oppress Black people, and re-use those images as artwork, can it have a function on a gallery wall? I believe so. If, as they are, African women on both sides of the continent are re-using broken pottery and crockery to decorate the outsides and interiors of their homes, thereby providing a continuing link between useful and useable objects of the immediate past and today and tomorrow, what does it mean when Julien Schnabel, bored at his job as a New York chef, smashes plates for fun, then smashes plates bought from the Salvation Army, for an international art world living? More to the point, what does it mean when a Black artist wants to form an international link between the continents of Europe/America and Africa and finds that Euro-American ‘masters’ have stolen the genre, assimilated the methodology, denied the source, oppressed the originators and claimed the prize? Too much time and creative energy can be used up trying to right these wrongs of cultural piracy: make the work.

Black artists should be looking at real links and taking time to make stronger ones. Gathering and re-using is an essential part of Black creativity, it does not mimic and is inextricably linked to economic circumstance. Each piece within the piece has its own history, its own past and its own contribution to the whole: the new function. As Black women artists in the Black triangle in the twentieth century, we must continue this process of gathering and re-using.

细节来自 Lubaina Himid，《喷泉旁的3 个女人》，1985，最初转载于FAN，2: 8，1988年秋，9。

收集和再利用的艺术实践据说是由西班牙人毕加索于二十年代在巴黎发明的。“爵士时代”帕丽斯为“发现”非洲和她的手工艺品而高兴得跳了起来，并偷走了它们。没有“摩尔人的影响”这个词就无法描述西班牙。高迪的建筑是距离上沃尔特波波迪乌拉索大清真寺最近的欧洲建筑。从这些看似奇怪且不连贯的句子中，我的观点是，收集和再利用一直是黑人创造力的一部分。尽管欧洲埃及古物学家坚持认为埃及不在非洲（看地图），尽管拿破仑的流氓行为授权砸脸，但黑人的创造力一直存在，并且一直对世界产生重要影响狮身人面像来隐藏他们宽阔的扁平鼻子。事实上，著名的拿破仑椅子只是大约公元前 3000 年埃及椅子的复制品。黑色创意冲击客厅！欧洲人在偷窃然后否认真相。

我们需要空间和持久性：有多少拼贴画因为床下杂志的空间用完了而没有完成？然而，尽管生活条件狭窄、强制搬迁、奴隶制、重新安置，但一些最重要的黑人创造力形式仍然存在，这突出了一个现实，即通过困难的现在将过去与未来联系起来是需要创造力的。作为奴隶的美国黑人妇女被强行从非洲驱逐出境，被随意倾倒、处置和免除；过去和未来的一切感觉都应该是遥不可及的，但他们却做了被子。Zamani Soweto Sisters Council 作为机器编织者和针线女工在工厂工作一整天后以最低工资聚集在一起制作服装。他们决定通过制定自己的规则来赚取更多。他们所做的绗缝也有助于在全球范围内宣传该组织及其目标，同时帮助为该中心筹集资金。绗缝甚至在服装制造是真正赚钱的地方也有其用途。

从丢弃的东西或作为其他东西存在的东西重新创造的力量，在多大程度上赋予了制造者进行政治变革的力量？如果你用杂志上那些旨在利用资本主义从而压迫黑人的图像，并将这些图像重新用作艺术品，它可以在画廊墙上发挥作用吗？我相信是这样。如果像现在这样，非洲大陆两边的非洲妇女正在重新使用破碎的陶器和陶器来装饰她们家的外部和内部，从而在过去和今天和明天有用和可用的物品之间建立持续的联系，当 Julien Schnabel 厌倦了他作为纽约厨师的工作，为了好玩而砸盘子，然后为了国际艺术界的生活而砸了从救世军那里买的盘子，这意味着什么？更重要的是，当一个黑人艺术家想要在欧洲/美洲和非洲大陆之间建立国际联系，并发现欧美“大师”窃取了流派，同化了方法论，否认了来源，压制了发起者并声称时，这意味着什么？奖项？试图纠正文化盗版的这些错误可能会耗费太多时间和创造力：制作作品。

黑人艺术家应该寻找真正的联系并花时间制作更强大的联系。收集和再利用是黑人创造力的重要组成部分，它不会模仿并且与经济环境密不可分。作品中的每一件作品都有自己的历史、自己的过去和自己对整体的贡献：新功能。作为二十世纪黑三角中的黑人女性艺术家，我们必须继续这个收集和再利用的过程。