Loophole of Retreat

1: a phrase used by Harriet Jacobs (also, Brent) in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to refer to the attic space she hid from her enslavers for seven years. Through the “loopholes” (two small holes carved into the wall, she was able to see without being seen; to watch her children, her mother.; a place for: “waiting for the family to return from the grave; sometimes weeping, sometimes falling asleep, dreaming strange dreams of the dead and the living”; that which "both in the landscape of slavery and through [Harriet's] sense of place, demonstrate[s] an unresolved, but workable, opposition to geographic domination” (McKittrick, 40).

2: an art collection formed by Simone Leigh; “with Jacobs’ narrative as a touchstone, Leigh’s new sculptures and sound installation at the Guggenheim explore an ontology of black women, centering radical agency and self-determination while daring to present a femininity defined by strength, solidity, and power” (Simmons).