Born in Los Angeles and trained at Scripps College and Otis Art Institute, Alison Saar is known for works that explore themes of cultural identity, history, and mythology. Inspired by her mother Betye, an acclaimed collage and assemblage artist, and by her father Richard, an art conservator and painter, Saar’s practice represents a confluence of art histories. Craft traditions and the use of found objects can be seen in her art.

This sculpture is drawn from a character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Civil War-era novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In the book, the slave girl Topsy is made “good” with a lock of hair from a white playmate. Departing from the story, Saar imagines a different fate for Topsy, one where the girl refuses to be pacified. Here Topsy is clad in hammered metal and is armed with a tobacco knife, a tool of plantation labor. Hair has political and personal resonance for the Black female body, and Topsy’s is an elaborate crown with cotton branches. By rendering an African American girl in armor with a bold stance, Saar questions histories of sculpture that have made monuments for men, soldiers, and gods—and envisions Topsy as a regal symbol of defiance and empowered femininity.