BLACKFACE (2007) is a reprinting of 30 declassified documents from Jean Seberg’s FBI file at their original size on mirrors. The contents of these documents uncover the FBI’s monitoring of Seberg’s political, financial and sexual involvement with the Black Panthers and the smear campaign that FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover generated with the news media to destroy her. These documents are graphically layered with both the FBI’s deletion markings of censored information and the reproduction scars generated from their serial photocopying as they were passed between government agencies. In reprinting the documents on mirrors, Adams compounds their graphic layering with the viewer’s reflection.

Jean Seberg was born and raised in Marshalltown, Iowa. She was only seventeen in 1955 when she was chosen from thousands of hopeful young actresses by director Otto Preminger to star as Joan of Arc in his film of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. In Seberg’s next film, Bonjour Tristesse, also directed by Preminger, her role as a spoiled pixyish adolescent vacationing with her playboy father on the French Riviera inspired a young Godard to cast her opposite Belmondo in Breathless, which would become a New Wave sensation. In total Seberg made thirty-four films, which also included The Mouse That Roared, Lilith, Paint Your Wagon, and Airport. In the late 60s and early 70s, Seberg’s political empathy and sexual relationship with Hakim Jamal, a charismatic player in the Black Power movement, as well as her financial support of the Black Panther Party led the FBI to monitor her activities and smear her reputation in the media. She never fully recovered from the scandal and over the next several years became increasingly dependent on alcohol and prescription drugs. On September 9, 1979, Jean Seberg was found dead in her parked car in a Paris suburb. The autopsy revealed she had overdosed on barbiturates and alcohol. After a lengthy investigation her death was ruled a suicide by the Paris police.

The artist would like to acknowledge the pioneering work of Margia Kramer who first requested the declassified F.B.I. files on Jean Seberg in 1979 under the United States’ Freedom of Information Act.