Alison Saar

[4][5] Saar has been a practicing artist for many years, exhibiting in galleries around the world as well as installing public art works in New York City.

[7] They also saw Outsider Art, such as Simon Rodia's Watts Towers in Los Angeles and Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley.

In the words of author and interviewer Hadley Roach, "In Saar’s life, the kitchen table is the easel, the children are the assistants, and driftwood is periodically dragged in from the backyard to become somebody’s legs.

"[8] In 1981, after graduating from Otis College of Art and Design, Saar and her husband, Tom Leesar, also an artist, moved to New York City.

[16] Saar is skilled in numerous artistic mediums, including metal sculpture, wood, fresco, woodblock print, and works using found objects.

The artist's multiethnic upbringing, multiracial identity and her studies of Latin American, Caribbean and African art and religion have informed her work.

[25] When asked about the motivation behind her practice of utilizing found materials she states "I’ve never really thought of my printmaking as political but very much about it being populist, accessible and affordable.

[28] Saar reimagines Stowe's stereotype as a symbol of resilience and resistance instead, a character transformed through love after experiencing the vicious treatment of enslavement that left her cold and heartless.

However, In a review of the 1993 Whitney Biennial, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith said that Saar's work was among the "few instances where the political and visual join forces with real effectiveness.

"[29] Some of Saar's works directly reference contemporary issues, such Rise (2020), as an ode to the Black Lives Matter Movement in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

[She] juggles themes of personal and cultural identity as she fashions various sizes of female bodies (often her own) that are buoyant with story while solid in stance.”[30]Saar has created several public works throughout the course of her career.

This piece is located in Harriet Tubman Memorial Plaza, South Harlem, at the intersection of St. Nicholas Ave and Fredrick Douglas Boulevard on W 122nd Street.

[31] A 2011 public collection of her works on display in Madison Square Park titled "Seasons" includes the individual pieces Spring, Fall, Winter, and Summer.

The opening of the Paris Summer Olympics in 2024 marked the unveiling of a new public artwork by Saar in the Charles-Aznavour Garden on the city’s Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

The monument, titled The Salon, depicts a Black woman holding an olive branch and a golden flame, surrounded by a circle of chairs that viewers are welcome to sit upon.

[33] In an interview with New York Times magazine Saar discussed her relationship with the Yoruba goddess of childbirth and rivers—Yemoja: "Yemoja crops up in my work a lot.