Abstract

This thesis considers the ways in which artist Senga Nengudi’s R.S.V.P. series (1975-ongoing) occupies museum collections presently and how the works’ material conditions affect conservation processes. Further, this thesis seeks to understand Nengudi’s R.S.V.P. series as an unruly and rebellious form of cultural invention and intervention in the museum. R.S.V.P. is a series of sculptural and performative artworks that utilise worn, nylon pantyhose filled with sand to create bulbous, bodily forms, tautly pinned and stretched across the gallery walls or resting weighty upon the gallery floor. Bringing together interdisciplinary research, this thesis contends with the work’s materiality of pantyhose, sand, and its connection to skin, tactility, and the Black body to address the ongoing acquisition and conservation of R.S.V.P. within museums. As artworks that are ephemeral, tactile, and performative, they possess sensorial and haptic qualities that rebel against museological systems. By drawing on Black studies, contemporary conservation theories, and performance studies, this thesis calls for an ethics of care in attending to R.S.V.P. within a museological collection. Ultimately, it proposes that R.S.V.P. has the potential to redirect conservation processes away from traditional methods predicated on restoration and authenticity, urging institutions to engage with works in ways that meaningfully attend to their material and conceptual complexities.