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Support Hyperallergic’s independent arts journalism for as little as $8 per month. Become a Member Self-taught artist Nellie Mae Rowe lived most of her life in obscurity, tucked away in Georgia in her home where she surrounded herself with chewing-gum sculptures, colorful rag dolls, and whimsical drawings made with crayons, gouache, pens, and pencils that centered on imaginative characters and frequently featured an elaborate signature. Born on July 4, 1900 to a sharecropper and formerly enslaved father, she made art without experiencing much of the fame that it brought her after her death in 1982.
After years hidden from the spotlight, Rowe is now front and center in the feature-length documentary This World Is Not My Own (2023) directed by Opendox filmmakers Petter Ringbom and Marquise Stillwell. Split into four parts plus an interlude, the film retraces the long-overlooked artist’s life by contextualizing her work, distinct for its playful characters and dreamlike settings, in the world in which she lived, rife with racial discrimination and violence that lingered in the South after the end of slavery. It dives into historical events like the 1906 Atlanta race massacre and the 1913 murder of factory worker Mary Phagan, followed b.