Wood, palm fronds, acrylic paint, doll, candles, bone, shell, printed papers, fabric, metal and other materials
Tate Modern
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on display
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/betye-saar-23774" aria-label="More by Betye Saar" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Betye Saar</a>
Mti
Presented by the Tate Americas Foundation 2022
<p><span>Mti</span> 1973 is a shrine-like sculpture just over a metre high made from various materials collected and assembled by American artist Betye Saar. Its base comprises four large palm fronds; these prop up a platform on which there are four candles and a wooden box, open at the front. A second wooden box rests on top of this. On this box rests an orb on which a skull-like mask has been placed, facing upwards. The two boxes contain several figures. The lower box houses a black-faced doll; the upper one houses three standing animal gods. The two boxes are painted on all three closed sides with several all-seeing eyes, crosses and palms. There are multiple other decorations over the sculpture including beaded bracelets, bones and animal figurines.</p>
sculpture wood palm fronds acrylic paint doll candles bone shell printed papers fabric metal other materials
12 July 2017 – 19 July 2020
2020-07-19
12 July 2017 – 22 October 2017
2017-10-22
2017-07-12
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2 February 2018 – 23 April 2018
2018-04-23
2018-02-02
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, USA)
7 September 2018 – 3 February 2019
2019-02-03
2018-09-07
Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York, USA)
23 March 2019 – 1 September 2019
2019-09-01
2019-03-23
The Broad Museum (Los Angeles, USA)
9 November 2019 – 8 March 2020
2020-03-08
2019-11-09
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young Museum
19 April 2020 – 19 July 2020
2020-07-19
2020-04-19
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, USA)
http://www.mfah.org
2017-07-12
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power
Exhibition
12 July 2017 – 7 September 2020
2020-09-07
14 September 2018 – 3 February 2019
2019-02-03
2018-09-14
Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York, USA)
23 March 2019 – 1 September 2019
2019-09-01
2019-03-23
The Broad Museum (Los Angeles, USA)
9 November 2019 – 8 March 2020
2020-03-08
2019-11-09
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young Museum
27 June 2020 – 7 September 2020
2020-09-07
2020-06-27
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, USA)
http://www.mfah.org
2017-07-12
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983
Loan-out
1 May 2023 – 4 May 2025
2025-05-04
1 May 2023 – 4 May 2025
2025-05-04
2023-05-01
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2023-05-01
Betye Saar and Firelei Báez
Collection based display
Mti
object: 1080 × 597 × 445 mm
Presented by the Tate Americas Foundation 2022
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<p>
<i>Mti</i> 1973 is a shrine-like sculpture just over a metre high made from various materials collected and assembled by American artist Betye Saar. Its base comprises four large palm fronds; these prop up a platform on which there are four candles and a wooden box, open at the front. A second wooden box rests on top of this. On this box rests an orb on which a skull-like mask has been placed, facing upwards. The two boxes contain several figures. The lower box houses a black-faced doll; the upper one houses three standing animal gods. The two boxes are painted on all three closed sides with several all-seeing eyes, crosses and palms. There are multiple other decorations over the sculpture including beaded bracelets, bones and animal figurines. </p>
<p>Saar made <i>Mti</i> in 1973 after a period of time in which she had used derogatory racist material found in flea markets to express the Civil Rights goals of the Black Power movement, most famously in <i>The Liberation of Aunt Jemima</i> 1972 (Berkeley Art Museum, California). She had long been interested in mysticism: in her work <i>Nine Mojo Secrets</i> 1971 (California African America Museum), for instance, she incorporated images of planets and moons alongside an all-seeing eye. However, <i>Mti</i> was her first sculpture conceived as a kind of shrine. In preparing it Saar not only gathered various objects, but also studied several religious and mystical traditions including Islam and Hinduism. She took the title from the Swahili word for tree. In an interview with the art critic Cindy Nemser shortly after the work was made, Saar explained that ‘from my involvement with the black movement I moved into a concern with black history going back to Africa and other darker civilisations such as Egypt or Oceania. I was interested in the kinds of mystical things that are part of non-European religion and culture.’ (Quoted in Nemser 1996, p.323.) </p>
<p>This suggests that Saar’s ambition in <i>Mti </i>was to create a shrine-sculpture bringing together elements of different non-European religions and traditions as a means of confronting white supremacy, albeit in a different way to her last body of work with its militant political imagery. In an interview with the artist Benny Andrews, Saar explained the move in this way: </p>
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</p><blockquote>There is more secretiveness [in works such as <i>Mti</i>] because I think this represents the way Black people feel about the movement today. They’ve got over the violent part and have become more introspective and are doing more thinking and plotting. Blacks are dealing with their enemy on a secret level. The political messages are still in my work but one has to think harder to find them.’ <br/>(Quoted in Benny Andrews, ‘Jemimas, Mysticism and Mojos: The Art of Betye Saar’, <i>Encore American and Worldwide News</i>, 17 March 1975, p.30.)</blockquote>
<p>Saar completed <i>Mti </i>in September 1973 and showed it first in her exhibition <i>Betye Saar: Selected Works 1964–1973</i>, which opened the following month at the Fine Arts Gallery of the California State University. In the catalogue it is listed as the last work on the checklist and titled <i>Shrine: Mti</i>. In this exhibition the work was presented directly on the floor surrounded by hanging objects; no viewer interaction was encouraged. When Saar next exhibited it, in 1977 in an exhibition titled <i>Ritual</i> at the Baum Silverman Gallery in Los Angeles, she made a platform for the work and invited visitors to leave an offering for the sculpture. She wrote an accompanying text which said that ‘<i>Mti </i>receives the power of accumulative personal energy … The assemblage <i>Mti</i> is receiving tokens, gifts, offerings.’ </p>
<p>The change in presentation between 1973 and 1977 can be attributed to Saar’s reading of an article by the art historian Arnold Rubin, who was teaching at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) at the time. In a piece entitled ‘Accumulation: Power and Display in African Sculpture’, published in <i>Artforum </i>in May 1975, Rubin argued that accumulation in African sculpture served two essential functions: one for display, to increase the visual presence of the object; the other for power, since the object’s power increased with the addition of elements given by the community. In both instances, he asserted, the aim of accumulation has to do with increasing the objects’ ability to foster ‘social cohesion’ (Arnold Rubin, ‘Accumulation: Power and Display in African Sculpture’, <i>Artforum</i>, May 1975, p.36).</p>
<p>Rubin’s article convinced Saar that viewers of <i>Mti </i>could continue her processes of accumulating and assembling when the work was exhibited. Furthermore, the article allowed her to understand that, in her own assemblages, she had moved away from a western model – as proposed by the curator William Seitz in his exhibition <i>The Art of Assemblage</i> at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1961 – to a model closer to that of traditional African societies. In Seitz’s view, the assemblage artist made sculptures from fragments of formerly functional objects deemed useless by industrial societies and created works as expressions of their own individual vision. However, Saar was bringing together elements because of their continued use for the community and sharing the act of assemblage with a community of viewers. This tallies with Rubin’s account of African assemblage practices which ‘emphasize consensus and consolidation, and the affirmation and reinforcement of social values and cultural continuity’ (Rubin 1975, p.47.) </p>
<p>Since 1977 <i>Mti</i> has been shown in eight different exhibitions including solo shows at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York in 1980 and Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in 1984. In most presentations Saar encouraged visitors to leave offerings; she has collected these over the years. At Tate Modern, London, in the exhibition <i>Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power</i> in 2017, <i>Mti</i> was presented in the context of the works it was shown beside in 1973, so offerings were not presented. </p>
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<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Cindy Nemser, ‘Conversation with Betye Saar’, <i>The Feminist Art Journal</i>, no.4, Winter 1975/1976, pp.19–24, reprinted in <i>Art Talk: Conversations with 15 Women Artists</i>, Abingdon, Oxon 1996, pp.320–33.<br/>Kellie Jones, ‘To/From Los Angeles with Betye Saar’, in <i>Betye Saar: Extending the Frozen Moment</i>, exhibition catalogue, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor 2006, pp.28–37.<br/>Mark Godfrey and Zoe Whitley (eds), <i>Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power</i>, exhibition catalogue, Tate Modern, London 2017.</p>
<p>Mark Godfrey<br/>June 2018</p>
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Summary
2023-09-29T00:00:00
summary
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