Tate | Online project | Tarzan to Rambo


	This allusive work explores the complex interweaving of black history with classic Hollywood narratives and other mass cultural forms, which have created powerful stereotypes of white male supremacy, while presenting black people as foolish 'natives'. Boyce is the 'English born Native' of the title and the work explores the artist's desire to understand her own sense of self, in response to the images and roles offered by a predominantly white-controlled media.
	The format of the work echoes a screen, while the artist's self-portrait repeated across it underscores the relative invisibility of black women in film and TV. The artist is literally hemmed in on one side by stereotypical 1930s cartoons of a black child, while the bottom line of trance-like images refers both to Hollywood's fascination with voodoo, and to Surrealist theories of creativity through the unconscious.

Other Works in Focus: Pharmacy | Cold Dark Matter

Sonia Boyce, From Tarzan to Rambo: English Born `Native' Considers her Relationship to the Constructed/Self Image and her Roots in Reconstruction, 1987
Photograph and mixed media on paper 124 x 359 cm
Tate. Purchased 1987