Does Black feminist literature change the storytelling of these works? Substituting the vessel for the body on the pedestal inserts narratives owned by a marginalized voice that is deserving of a platform in Western contexts as a blueprint of storytelling interwoven with culture; this is what I argue contributes to the diasporic archive and the contextual understanding to critically think through how race has informed the way we engage through generations and community. Communities entered by artists in this thesis describe standard techniques, skills, and ceramic processes rooted in Indigenous and African practices spread through enslavement and cultural exchange. Practitioners, artists, and educators preserve them.

The argument for Black feminist readings is to challenge default language regarding gender and race in Western art, exemplified by the legitimization of Abuja pottery after the British introduction of the Abuja Pottery School in Nigeria. This is also in conjunction with the commodification of Black women’s labor in visual art and historically through property ownership- breaking from centralizing Western narratives and developing a vocabulary of relationships to the earth, the body, space, fertility, and self-determination.

Black feminism causes us to challenge what we know about reading vessels and use the body to orient the viewer to the art object. It is also deeply confrontational to how collecting institutions have prioritized this type of work and how ‘taste’ has changed the relevancy of ceramics in the art world.