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THORNTON DIAL The Gorilla Lends A Helping Hand To The United States And The Telephone Company (late 1980s) // Wood, enamel, carpet, telephone wire, mop, industrial sealing compound, on plywood

via Souls Grown Deep Foundation

Per Souls Grown Deep Foundation:

“A number of tricky significations are concentrated in this composition. The seated female figure should remind any culturally literate viewer of the film King Kong, in which the monstrous primate pursues the white actress, Fay Wray, and holds her struggling in his fisted hand. By contrast, this gorilla is entirely benign, gently supporting a black female figure in its open hand.

The cruciform telephone poles suggest the suffering and travail often hidden behind working-class productivity in U.S. society. That theme converges effectively with the central figure of the gorilla and the black woman as together offering a ‘helping hand to the United States and the telephone company.’

The coded significations suggest the following import: black people generally and black women in particular are a principal source of the productivity and effectiveness of this nation’s utilities and greatness, and their travail is transformative (redemptive?) in ways that are often covert and unacknowledged.”

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See more works by Thornton Dial.