In..1932, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney acquired Prophet’s ‘Congolais’ for the Whitney Museum Collection —its first sculptural acquisition by a woman of color.

Where does a mixed race African-Indigenous American girl in 1914 get the audacity to aspire to be anything other than what society says she should be? A maid. A domestic. Second class, if that. A sculptor? Surely not.

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet defied those expectations. She faced opposition from her Narragansett Indian father, her African mother, and American society at large, while battling her own demons.

Prophet scrubbed floors for years to put herself through Rhode Island School of Design. She finally made her way to Paris in the 1920s Jazz Age. She continued her studies with the masters at École des Beaux Arts and emerged as an extraordinary artist. French critics “regarded her as one of America’s most talented sculptors.”

ACHIEVEMENT DIDN’T GUARANTEE REMEMBRANCE

Throughout American history, achievements of African American or Native American excellence were too often overlooked or celebrated briefly and soon forgotten. CARVING DEFIANCE exposes the effects of such erasure. Prophet’s struggle was not only to be an artist but for to right to define herself.

The film traces Prophet’s journey and price she paid for her ambition: working in wretched hovels, going long periods without food choosing to buy marble and clay instead, enduring years of ascetic, crippling self-denial. Should such sacrifice for art be lost to history?

WHO GETS TO BE REMEMBERED?

What is lost when a life disappears? For descendants of slavery and marginalized Americans, erasure extends beyond public legacy into family identity itself. Survivors of penury will never know the names of their own grandparents, let alone artists like —Nancy Elizabeth Prophet.

Retrieving the life of even one gifted individual cannot repair history. But it can reclaim it. Carving Defiance documents Prophet’s life to restore an artist to the record, to reinforces identity, ascribe worth, and most of all, acknowledge existence.

Prophet's courage and relentless pursuit of the right of self-expression and the right to determine her own destiny are an inspiration for not only for women, and historically marginalized, but all whohas suffered the pains of social exclusion, stigma, devaluation, and invisibility, for the right to be seen —and remembered.

Where does a mixed race African-Indigenous American girl in 1914 get the audacity to aspire to be anything other than what society says she should be? A maid. A domestic. Second class, if that. A sculptor? Surely not.

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet defied those expectations. She faced opposition from her Narragansett Indian father, her African mother, and American society at large, while battling her own demons.

ACHIEVEMENT DIDN’T GUARANTEE REMEMBRANCE

Throughout American history, achievements of African American or Native American excellence were too often overlooked or celebrated briefly and soon forgotten. CARVING DEFIANCE exposes the effects of such erasure. Prophet’s struggle was not only to be an artist but for to right to define herself.

The film traces Prophet’s journey and price she paid for her ambition: working in wretched hovels, going long periods without food choosing to buy marble and clay instead, enduring years of ascetic, crippling self-denial. Should such sacrifice for art be lost to history?

WHO GETS TO BE REMEMBERED?

What is lost when a life disappears? For descendants of slavery and marginalized Americans, erasure extends beyond public legacy into family identity itself. Survivors of penury will never know the names of their own grandparents, let alone artists like —Nancy Elizabeth Prophet.

Retrieving the life of even one gifted individual cannot repair history. But it can reclaim it. Carving Defiance documents Prophet’s life to restore an artist to the record, to reinforces identity, ascribe worth, and most of all, acknowledge existence.

TRAILER