User:RainZew/Maud Sulter

Maud Sulter (19 September 1960 – 27 February 2008) was a Scottish-Ghanaian contemporary feminist, fine artist, photographer, writer, cultural historian, educator, activist, and curator of Ghanaian and Black heritage. Sulter is well-known for her poetry, art and collaborations with other Black feminist scholars and activists, in capturing the hidden and forgotten lives of Black peoples in Europe.

Early life and education
Maud Sulter was born on 19 September 1960 in Glasgow, Scotland to a Scots mother and a Ghanaian father. Later on, she moves to London to attend and graduate from the London College of Fashion. After her degree, Sulter pursued writing and journalism, founding Black Women's Creative Project in 1982. Sulter begins writing articles and creating art to address the hidden histories of Black peoples' in Europe, with an emphasis on collaborating with other Black feminists and lesbian figures of the time. Through these collaborations, Sulter begins to pursue photography as a means of visually depicting these histories and contemporary figures, leading to her return to academia and attaining a Master's degree in Photographic Studies from the University of Derby in 1989. Her maternal grandfather had been an amateur photographer.

Career
After graduating from London College of Fashion, Sulter worked with Sheba's Feminist Publisher's Collective. As the only Black woman writer at the time, Sulter recognized an increasing need for writing tailored to Black women and co-founded the Black Women's Creative Project with Ingrid Pollard. The magazine created a variety of content ranging from "hair braiding, poetry and performance".

The Thin Blackline (1985) exhibition created by colleague Lubaina Himid, marked the beginning of Sulter's art career. The exhibition displayed the art of highly esteemed Black and Asian women artists, re-centering the visibility of Black and Asian art in the British art scene. Sulter continued to work closely with Himid, later writing and editing their book Passion: Discourses on Blackwomen’s Creativity in 1990. Passion would later be recognized as "the first book dedicated to acknowledging and celebrating Black women artists in the UK".

Sulter also takes up writing poetry and screenplays, producing a variety of renowned works. Some of her most notable include a series of poems titled "As a Black woman" (1985), which later won the title of the Vera Bell Prize from ACER (1990) and the Afro-Caribbean Education Resource (1989) and a play inspired by the background of former Ghana head of state Jerry Rawlings, entitled "Service to Empire" (2002).

Sulter's photographic practice includes contemporary portraiture and montage. Her work typically referenced historical and mythical subjects, paying particular interest to forgotten figures. Her photography was exhibited across the UK and internationally, including at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1987; the Johannesburg Biennial (1996); and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2003. She received several awards and residencies, including the British Telecom New Contemporaries Award 1990 and the Momart Fellowship at Tate Liverpool, also in 1990.

She also worked as a Lecturer, teaching Fine Art at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Forgotten Black Women of the Past
Sulter's work primarily centred on reimagining and envisioning the histories and contemporary lives of Black women figures in Europe and globally. One of the figures Sulter recreated was Jeanna Duval. Sulter notes that she became enthralled with Duval after seeing a display of her labelled "The Unknown Woman" at an art gallery. Sulter describes the feeling of "being willed to give her a name," in various interviews. Sulter pays homage to her in many of her works, with two of the more well-known in Jeanne Duval: The Melodrama, and "Calliope" in Zabat.

Similarly, Sulter's Syrcas highlights the forgotten and hidden histories of Black and African peoples throughout Europe, paying particular attention to their eraser during the rise of Nazism. Through a series of photomontages of European landscapes, Sulter centers Black and African figures and symbolism to recognize their long histories on these lands and allude to the effects Nazism.

Building Coalitions
Sulter extends this attention to the histories of European art in Zabat (1991). Zabat revisits the story of the nine Greek muses, reimagining each muse as one of the well-known Black women figures of the time. Figures like Alice Walker, a Black feminist author and activist photographed as Phalia, are pictured with signature attributes, alluding to their own work as feminist activists.

Her work also created coalitions between Black feminist and lesbian groups. Through collaborations with Black women artists, writers and photographers across the world, Sulter successfully brought awareness to the histories and continued presence of Black women figures. Sulter is contemporarily recognized as a significant contributor to the History of feminism.

Death and legacy
She died in 2008, aged 47, after a long illness. She was survived by two daughters and a son.

Maud Sulter's work is held in a number of collections, including the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Arts Council Collection, the British Council, the Scottish Arts Council and the Scottish Parliament Collection. In 2011–2012, her work was shown at Tate Britain, London, in the exhibition Thin Black Line(s), which was a re-staging of the seminal 1986 exhibition, The Thin Black Line at the ICA. In 2017, her Muses (Calliope: the muse of epic poetry, and Terpsichore: the muse of dance), two portraits were put on show in the Walker Gallery as part of the largest LGBTQ+ art exhibition in the UK, Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender, and Identity.

In August 2020, Murray Edwards College MCR held a "Black Feminist Artist Tour" recognizing Maud Sulter as an artist who "reclaim[ed] representation, exploring and documenting Black women’s creativity and power".