The
daughter of renowned California sculptor Betye Saar, Alison Saar has
established her own identity as a strong feminist, with the protagonists of her
rough-hewn sculptures representing different aspects of African American
womanhood. In the mid-1990s she embarked on her Hairesies series (a play on the
word heresies), confronting expectations of beauty based on racial stereotypes.
Pressed exemplifies the themes
explored in this series, with a woman presented both as a powerful figure and
victim of fashion’s expectations.

Made
up of such found materials as antique tailors’ irons and rusted wire, Pressed is carefully crafted so that the
woman’s head just balances on the supporting pedestal. While Saar adopts
strategies seen in so-called “outsider” and folk art, as well as African art,
she also brings a strong self-consciousness to her work. She has stated:  "[My sculpture] goes back to the duality
in myself, seeing myself as the civilized self and the uncivilized self, the
wild self and the controlled, contained, well-behaved self. It plays into those
two polar worlds."