Since the early 1980s, Marlene Dumas has created paintings and drawings that raise provocative questions about gender, beauty, sexuality, race, and related conditions of oppression and violence. As a white woman who was raised under apartheid rule in South Africa, some of her strongest works tackle complicated themes of racial politics.<\/p>
This representation of a black African albino suggests that race and color are social constructs that fail to correspond to identity. By choosing a subject whose very existence defies conventional racial categories, and by rendering his skin tone and hair color in a sickly green hue, Dumas pictorially destabilized the division between black and white.<\/p>\n","short_description":"Since the early 1980s, Marlene Dumas, a white woman raised under apartheid in South Africa, has created figurative paintings and ink-wash drawings that raise provocative questions about gender, beauty, sexuality, race, and the effects of oppression and violence. This representation of a black African albino man destabilizes the division between black and white, exposing race as a social construct that fails to correspond to identity.","dimensions":"130 \u00d7 110 cm (51 1\/8 \u00d7 43 1\/4 in.)","dimensions_detail":[{"depth":null,"width":110,"height":130,"diameter":null,"clarification":null}],"medium_display":"Oil on canvas","inscriptions":null,"credit_line":"Through prior gift of Mary and Leigh Block","catalogue_display":null,"publication_history":null,"exhibition_history":null,"provenance_text":null,"edition":null,"publishing_verification_level":"Web Basic","internal_department_id":246,"fiscal_year":2003,"fiscal_year_deaccession":null,"is_public_domain":false,"is_zoomable":false,"max_zoom_window_size":843,"copyright_notice":null,"has_multimedia_resources":false,"has_educational_resources":false,"has_advanced_imaging":false,"colorfulness":11.8733,"color":{"h":150,"l":48,"s":4,"percentage":0.12207095091725564,"population":1027},"latitude":null,"longitude":null,"latlon":null,"is_on_view":false,"on_loan_display":"
On loan to Barbican Centre for Arts and Conferences in London for Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica<\/i><\/p>","gallery_title":null,"gallery_id":null,"nomisma_id":null,"artwork_type_title":"Painting","artwork_type_id":1,"department_title":"Contemporary Art","department_id":"PC-8","artist_id":54948,"artist_title":"Marlene Dumas","alt_artist_ids":[],"artist_ids":[54948],"artist_titles":["Marlene Dumas"],"category_ids":["PC-8","PC-825","PC-831"],"category_titles":["Contemporary Art","Women artists","Essentials"],"term_titles":["oil on canvas","20th Century","painting (image making)","oil paint (paint)","albinoism","oil painting","canvas","portraits: African subject","African","men","painting"],"style_id":"TM-13130","style_title":"20th Century","alt_style_ids":[],"style_ids":["TM-13130"],"style_titles":["20th Century"],"classification_id":"TM-66","classification_title":"oil on canvas","alt_classification_ids":["TM-9"],"classification_ids":["TM-66","TM-9"],"classification_titles":["oil on canvas","painting"],"subject_id":"TM-12471","alt_subject_ids":["TM-8595","TM-12470","TM-10121"],"subject_ids":["TM-12471","TM-8595","TM-12470","TM-10121"],"subject_titles":["albinoism","portraits: African subject","African","men"],"material_id":"TM-2451","alt_material_ids":["TM-3124"],"material_ids":["TM-2451","TM-3124"],"material_titles":["oil paint (paint)","canvas"],"technique_id":"TM-3891","alt_technique_ids":["TM-4273"],"technique_ids":["TM-3891","TM-4273"],"technique_titles":["painting (image making)","oil painting"],"theme_titles":["Women artists","Essentials"],"image_id":"6158570b-9aa3-c570-209e-f2e1e54e960a","alt_image_ids":[],"document_ids":[],"sound_ids":[],"video_ids":[],"text_ids":[],"section_ids":[],"section_titles":[],"site_ids":[],"suggest_autocomplete_boosted":"Albino","suggest_autocomplete_all":[{"input":["2002.597"],"contexts":{"groupings":["accession"]}},{"input":["Albino"],"weight":2849,"contexts":{"groupings":["title"]}}],"source_updated_at":"2026-07-11T00:30:19-05:00","updated_at":"2026-07-11T03:40:22-05:00","timestamp":"2026-07-12T01:52:52-05:00"},"info":{"license_text":"The `description` field in this response is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic License (CC-By) and the Terms and Conditions of artic.edu. All other data in this response is licensed under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) 1.0 designation and the Terms and Conditions of artic.edu.","license_links":["https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/publicdomain\/zero\/1.0\/","https:\/\/www.artic.edu\/terms"],"version":"1.14"},"config":{"iiif_url":"https:\/\/www.artic.edu\/iiif\/2","website_url":"http:\/\/www.artic.edu"}}