4: The Man-Monster's Legacy
Though mocked, imprisoned, and rendered "notorious" in his own day, in recent years Sewally has recently become an important person in queer, black, and transgender history, and his story has inspired artists.
Imagination and reenactment have taken over where the historical record ends, as we see in three examples of contemporary artists who draw upon Sewally's story and the Man-Monster print.
Lezley Saar's Portrait
Lezley Saar's larger than life-sized mixed-media portrait of Sewally was inspired by the artist's encountering the Man-Monster print in Charles Addams' Dear Dead Days, a book of historical oddities and anomalies published in 1959.
Knowing little else about his story than what the image and caption provided, Saar's portrait nonetheless intuits several key truths about his story as we now know it. Placing a convict's plate around his neck, she likens the print to a modern day "mug shot."
But this is a double portrait, as Sewally's other face appears upside down and to the right, his other body floating mysteriously upwards and off the canvas. Neither body is the true Sewally and one is impelled to re-orient ones gaze to see it all. Saar's poetic image places Sewally/Jones in a space between genders.
<ADD Lezley Saar's art.
Anarchy Andi's Tatoo
AnarchyAndi. In homage to Sewally, Andi flaunts the imputed stigma of queerness back at society, as the print itself becoming part of hir "rig" with which to go "sailing along the street."
<ADD Tatoo picture>
Vaginal Davis's Performance
Vaginal Davis, performance artist and queer curator, has lectured about Peter Sewally, the "She-Monster of Olde New York" as she calls him, and aspires to play him/her on screen.
<ADD DAVIS PICTURE>
This is the last entry in an exhibit about Peter Sewally/Mary Jones. To return to the introduction to the exhibit or to earlier sections see below:
