1993
mixed media
14.5 x 17.5 x 7.5 in.
Collection of Eric Steven Wray

Madam Ching is the central character in many of the works Stout has created. Madam Ching is based on a real woman whom Stout encountered in Pittsburgh in the early 1980s. Using fragments of truth and hearsay about her, she has constructed an elaborate visual narrative, telling stories about Ching and her conjuring, and also "telling on herself."

Memories of the Old Fortune Teller is Stout's earliest piece about Madam Ching. The man and woman she depicts may be Ching herself and a lover; it is significant that Ching is represented by a watercolor simulating an old photograph whereas her lover is pictured in an actual photograph. This captures well Stout's insistence on keeping Ching mysterious, timeless, without a fixed identity. The crystal ball further historicizes her and begins to suggest the different systems she might have used to channel spiritual energy, from Hoodoo formulae to tarot cards to astrology. All are employed in healing relationships, the primary focus of Madam Ching's work in Stout's formulation. The choice of tarot cards to frame the images of a man and woman in Memories of the Old Fortune Teller reinforce this, with the lover's card carrying two meanings: "If the card should fall upright in a reading it means yearning, beauty, perfection, harmony, or the beginning of a possible romance. If the card should fall upside down in a reading it indicates infidelity, interference, the possibility of a wrong choice or frustrations in love and marriage." This dynamic tension between the positive and the negative and the role of chance in determining which way the cards will fall is at the heart of divinitory practices and at the heart of Stout's efforts to tip the scales favorably.

From M. Berns, Dear Robert, I'll See You at the Crossroads: A Project by Renée Stout, University Art Museum, UCSB, 1995.

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