Mistaken Identity is a major work by Joyce Scott. This work by the MacArthur "Genius" Award Recipient exemplifies her approach to artmaking, which often merges traditional handicraft with potent social commentary. Here, she combines beads and Murano glass forms in a seated figure with horns and a tail holding fire in its hands. Through this sculpture and others, Scott references social justice issues, such as gun violence, racial profiling, abuse of women, and sex trafficking.
Source: News Jan Feb Mar 2019
Images (2)
Audio (1)
Joyce J. Scott (American, born 1948)
Mistaken Identity, 2018
Run Time: 2:58
Recorded by Joyce J. Scott, artist / August 25, 2019
I’m Joyce J. Scott and this is a sculpture I made in 2018 entitled Mistaken Identity. Right now you are looking at a figure that I made that is partially beadwork and also made out of glass blown from Murano, Italy. It’s really of a devil or a demon or someone or something that’s not doing the best stuff for other people. The Mistaken Identity talks about sometimes how we look at things that are emblematic of something we dislike or that we think is negative without using it to bring about a positive reaction or ending. I think about what our politics are like now or relationships with folks that you either don’t like or agree with and realize that I’ve learned something very powerful and important from them. So the identity of what I saw them as is only a part of what I can gain from that relationship. I always tell people to remember that the devil or demons are angels who fell. So they also have that kind of soul still left. It has something burning in its hand—someone told me they thought it was a heart, and it could be, a heart or a corazón, because I use them a lot. It looks like the, you know, the valves and the aortas, and the stuff in a heart. But flames are not the end. Sometimes people think flames mean it’s burnt and it dead. But almost nothing really dies like that. The embers and whatever is left becomes fertilizer for the next thing. And a flame brings light for you to see by and warmth. It’s one of these powers that we can control or allow to exist in and of itself. So I use fire a lot itself a lot because of what it means. It’s an entity in and of itself that can be good or sometimes very treacherous.
You can say this culture is ying and a yang, certainly, but you can also say… I look at what I do as the physics of beadwork and I look at my life and my personae as the physics of Joyce. There’s the really good side and the really bad side, but most of us live our lives somewhere in the middle. Somewhere close to either side, but not in the extreme. So this Mistaken Identity is a compilation and a complexity of what it is to be a person an entity, because we encompass all of it. It is our choice about the stamina we place and who we wish to be.
