Issue 01
contents
intro.......................................................................................... 3 kehinde wiley............................................................................ 9 kendario la'pierre...................................................................... 15 wangechi mutu.......................................................................... 21 black panther............................................................................ 27 publication info......................................................................... 35 works cited............................................................................... 36
INTRO Afrosurrealism or Afrofuturism? Or both? That is the question. For many marginalized groups the genre of science fiction allows for them to imagine worlds and situations where the atrocities of their current situations are no more. Afrofuturism was a term coined by the white writer MarkDery in his 1994 essay “Black to the Future.� With an official nomenclature for this genre to function under Afrofuturism grew signifanctly in the worlds of philosophy and popular culture. 2018 saw Afrofuturism enter into the mainstream cultural lexicon with the release of the film Black Panther (2018). Now that the aesthetic and philosophy of black futurisms has pene-
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4 trated mainstream popular culture it is important to investigate how it is or is not useful as a tool of cultural criticism. It is this investigation that has led me to Afrosurrealism. Afrosurrealism was a term coined by D. Scot Miller in his article “AfroSurreal Manifesto: Black is the New Black.” He states ‘s about what’s going on now, not about what happened in the past, or in the future. Ifs about what’s in the current state” (Miller). He cites an early Afrosurreal work as including Ralph Ellison’s 1953 novel Invisible Man. Contemporary examples of Afrosurrealism in culture include Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, FKA Twigs, Erykah Badu, Kanye West (his music and Yeezy clothing brand) can be considered to exist within the realms of the Afrosurreal. Afrosurrealism as actionable realizations of black agency and empowerment. Rather than afrofuturism which is aspirational, and does not necessarily provide the links between the pres-
5 ent and the idealized future. While it does provide fictionalized notions of blackness that are unattainable they are much more focused on the “here and now” problems that are localized in the present for the black person. Afrofuturism, in Miller’s definition of it, relies on the “there and then.” That rhetoric employed in labelling Afrofuturism as such suggests a disconnect from the presence. It is useful because it creates a lens of empowerment and worlds free of the marginalization of the current black person, and gives them an escape. But, an escape is not an actionable text. It does not provide clear solutions grounded in the present. In an attempt to situate Afrosurrealism’s earlier roots Miller cites a quote by Satre where he describes the state of texts created by black persons as inherently surrealist because to exist as a black person in the hegemonically white world is a surreal state. Sartre refers to such
6 texts that recognize the surrealist nature of their creation as Negritude. Negritude is a concept rooted in the post-abolishment/liberation, black communities of the Caribbean. Paula Sato, in an article on the work of Afro-Chinese, Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, explains that the term originated from a movement amongst black, Caribbean men to take actionable steps to prevent the assassination of their culture. She remarks that because of its origins, the way that Negritude is discussed, and therefore how Afrosurrealism originated, are in masculine terms. Since Miller directly cites Negritude as influencing his manifesto on Afrosurrealism, it is fair to say that its introduction into the lexicon still retained those hyper-masculine, and heteronormative connotations. This bias is not addressed by Miller in his manifesto, which is one of several problematic aspects of his introduction of Afrosurrealism as a firmly defined
7 term for the cultural conversation surrounding black culture. The rhetoric with which Miller refers to Afrofuturism is largely derogatory. It is obvious that his reason for embracing Afrosurrealism so heartily is from its more actionable nature, rather than the aspirational idealism that he perceives Afrofuturism to be based on. His implication that Afrofuturism is based in the “there and then” is a broad generalization, as much as when he says that Afrosurrealism is the “here and now.” To suggest these two ideologies are such binary, inviolable opposites undermines the subversive power that they possess as mediums for cultural criticism. This issue will explore both concepts, through three profiles of black artists and a discussion around the release of Black Panther (2018) and more broadly Afro_isms introduction into the mainstream dialogue, to try and further understand how simultaneously liberating and limiting Miller’s manifesto is.
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KEHINDE WILEY
Questioning black gender roles & implicating black bodies in white wealth.
In February of 2018 one of the most significant
moments in contemporary American art occurred when the Presidential portrait of Barack Obama was revealed. It depicted a stern, but relaxed Obama gazing directly from a wooden chair framed by a wall of chrysanthemums, jasmine, and African violets. This was an unprecedented addition to the canon of presidential portraiture, and the artist to credit is Kehinde Wiley.
Born in Los Angeles, California in 1977 Kehinde
Wiley has made a name for himself with his aesthetic of painting classical scenes of rococco and renaissance oil portraits with black bodies at the center of the scene. Inspired by his many trips to classical art
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10 museums he wanted to create images that celebrated blackness in the same wealth-centric aesthetic that European aristocrats were formerly only allowed to occupy.
From this thesis of situat-
ing blackness in the iconography of black wealth has sprung more images that question not only ideas of who is allowed wealth, but also who is allowed to be be depicted as powerful, who society is confortable seeing violence acted by, and what gender roles are considered acceptable in the black community. Wiley credits his identity as a black, gay man to envision such surreal images in his art.
His images of contemporary black men splayed like a Boticelli
nude, or black women brandishing the heads of decapitated white women have been met with controversy, but they are examples of utilizing the “there and then” to address the “here and now.” His work could be called Afrosurreal in how it utilizes the lens of an “othered” voice, or Afrofuturist in that it perhaps reimagines an alternate past where images of blackness were the image of wealth.
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Kendario la’pierre
Illustrating black bodies as vessels of marginalization & beauty.
The work of German-born, Missou-
ri-raised artist Kendario La’Pierre can be labelled surrealist in the strictest sense in how it adheres to the aesthetic of the school of classical surrealism. Divorced from its aesthetic it is the subject matter of the work that makes it so explicitly Afrosurrealist.
La’Pierre cites one of his main influenc-
ers as Jean Michel Basquiat, an artist whose Dada-esque work espoused the Afrosurrealist ideology before that was a term widely recognized in the art world. La’Pierre’s work blends original photography, and digital
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17 painting to illustrate black bodies as vessels of their history and their present. His images elicit a feeling of beauty and horro, invoking the Romantic philosophical concept of the sublime.
The most prevalent motif in La’Pierre’s canon
of work is his focus on the head, commenting on the part of the body wherein the physical and the psyche become one. Inherited trauma and original trauma become one and the same. A bisected head shows a hooded dark figure walking through a park, while another solemn bust, overlayed with tropical flora. has a steel plate where the mouth should be.
Similarly to Wiley’s work, La’Pierre recognizes
that blackness does not solely exist in the “here and now” as Miller declares. He is aware that to represent blackness one must not disregard the present or the future, because to fully be able to address the issues of the contemporary collective black identity the past, the present, and the future is a muddled spectrum.
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wangechi mutu
Mutation and an eco-queer perspective on black femininity.
The use of collage in art is an incredibly subversive
medium. It takes images, largely ones proliferated through capitalist marketing, and transforms them into images completely divorced from the image’s original form. Wangechi Mutu, a Kenyan-born and Brooklyn-based artist, uses collages to this effect.
London’s Saatchi Gallery describes Mutu’s work as
“hybrids of multiple sources referencing the scars of cultural imposition. Placed atop medical diagrams, they feed off their cancerous classifications, directly confronting cultural preconception and bias” (Saatchigallery.com). Again the body is returned to as the vessel for how Afrosurrealists perceive attacks on blackness.
What’s notable about Mutu’s work is that, while black
woman are the focus of the work, their bodies and forms
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24 are comprised of parts of white women as well. In the image on facing page the forehead, temple, mouth, and chin belong to the body of a white woman. Only the skull is that of a black woman, yet the subject is unmistakably black. This series of work addresses what the Saatchi Gallery had described as a confrontation of cultural appropriation. It can both be seen as a comment on white women stealing the aesthetic of black womanhood with no consequence, and also the expectation for black women to adhere to white standards of beauty to be considered feminine. In the example she mutates the form of the subject to reflect this dichotomy.
In other works she also uses plants, animals, and machines
to comment on female blackness. In the next two examples Mutu “offers a futuristic totality of womanhood that’s both fiery and liberated. Comprised of motorcycle parts, she’s a machine built for speed: corpulent, sexy, with the dazzling power creation” (Saatchi). These images also present an eco-queer vision of the black futurisms, where orangic material, machine, and bodies combine in an expression of sexuality addressing “similarities between [racism, classism, and sexism] and the oppressive structures of speciesism and naturism” (Gaard). Her dystopian visions of a futuristic black womanhood mirror that of the contemporary one that exists in the ecological wasteland of black spaces.
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Postblack panther
Afro_isms in the Mainstream and what comes after Black Panther.
The term “Afrofuturism” exploded at the end
of March 2018 when Marvel’s Black Panther was released in cinemas worldwide. Suddenly this term that had been relegated to the world of “nerdom” and academia was being used by every film and culture critic in every major news publication across the globe.
Notable about the film’s release is that for many
persons Black Panther was not only the first time people may have encountered the term Afrofuturism, but it was also the first time many media consumers encountered any depiction of black persons in positions of technological, and sociological advancement not
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Black Panther the film is Afrofuturist, and
unapologetically so. It depicts a fictional African country called Wakanda that is home to the most technologically advanced society in the world. The film falls squarely within the parameters of Afrofuturism with its science fiction, and genre motifs, and while elements of it could be called Afrosurreal, overally the content of the film does not present as such. What could be considered Afrosurreal is the film as an object and the discussion surrounding it as a singular artifact.
Part of what makes Afrosurrealism so import-
ant is that the surrealist, alternate worlds that it depicts are not imagined. Rather they are the real world seen through the eyes of the “other.� In Afrosurrealism the reality of black life anywhere is just as alien to reality as Wakanda. The discussion that has surrounded Black Panther in the media and on-
30 line has caused many to view blackness in a way that they had never seen before. Those functioned as a lens through which the public, broadly speaking, had never encountered blackness and question its previous representation in media and its perception in reality.
While the work of Kehinde Wiley or Wangechi
Mutu might lead one to believe that Afrosurrealism needs to be explicitly surreal or “weird” it is more useful to expand the perception of this term. If we go by Miller’s definition that the crux of Afrosurrealism is the representation of reality through the lens of the “other” that opens up Afrosurrealism to include the most mundane and everyday artifacts to be included in the genre. His invocation of Sartre proclaiming that to exist as a black person is to exist in a surrealist reality solidifies the notion that media does not need to be
For example Junot Diaz’s novel The Brief Won-
drous Life of Oscar Wao is an example of Afrosurrealism existing in the mundanity of the real world of
31 contemporary New Jersey and Santo Domingo without the stylistic cues of other surrealist work. The novel uses the life of the protagonist Oscar to address black Latinx masculinity in how Oscar tries to negotiate his racial and cultural identity with his status as an obese nerd. Using Oscar as a lens through which to view these roles leads the reader to question the nature with which they have perceived black masculinity up to that point. Similarly Dee Rees’ 2011 film Pariah uses the existence of a black, lesbian teenager to
32 as a tool to question how blackness deals with sexuality and the process of coming out.
Black Panther definitely does not utilize mundanity
or reality in the way that Diaz or Rees did to convey alternate ideas of black gender and sexuality, but it’s perception has inspired audiences and the media to use it as a lens to question what had long been ingrained as the “correct� idea of blackness or Africanness to be.
The very idea that a film like Black Panther was al-
lowed to be produced is surrealist in and of itself. The longheld notion of media centered around black persons, or with multiple female lead characters being appealing to non-black or non-women of color audiences was seen as impossible. With its multiple female leads of diverse, non-male-centric roles, the film represented a non-homogenous vision of feminity that had previously not existed on film.
The female characters were not tokenized or rel-
egated to the typical roles that most female characters are mad to inhabit in big blockbuster films such as this. While it is easy to say that they are all motivated by their love of the male protagonist, upon closer inspection
33 their motivation is rooted in a love for their country, and their desire to help the male hero is all in the interest of their people.
This is especially seen in Okoye, the leader of
the king’s guard. She is not seen as being swayed by her emotions in the way other female characters might. Despite her allegiances to her friends she fiercely adheres to her allegiance to Wakanda. Even Nakia, T ’Challa’s love interest, is a spy who operates independently of him and his wishes for her. She holds more control in their relationship than he does which is similar to Okoye’s relationship with W’Kabi where her rationality is not swayed by emotion.
This representation of women being seen as
strong, and not completely at the mercy of their emotions or some dedication to the men in their lives is completely surreal to the representation of women of color in media before. Gender is always a subject of surrealism because it is so firmly in-
34 grained as one of the most inviolable aspects of humanity. In Afrosurrealism, as seen in the works of Kehinde Wiley and the representation of women in Black Panther, gender is warped from how it is seen in reality to try and engage a discourse about how gender is interpreted and conceptualized in the black community. What Black Panther has fostered in the media is an awareness of alternate black narratives, which are in themselves Afrosurreal. The film has enabled for a flux of media to proliferate an Afrosurrealist lens so as to engage in a dialogue about blackness and how it has been conceptualized in the media. The nature of a film as mainstream and ubiquitous as Black Panther diverging from the tropes of black representation on film, makes the surealness of it all the more notable and important.
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PUBLICATION INFO Issue: 01 Edition: 01 Date of Publication March 15, 2018 Published by Jack M. Moore jackmmoore.com English 152: LGBT Lit, U.S. Perspectives Queer Science Fiction Professor Alison Sperling, Phd Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California.
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WORKS CITED Gaard, Greta. “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism.” Hypatia, vol. 12, no. 1, 1997, pp. 114–137. JSTOR. Miller, D. Scott. “AfroSurreal Manifesto” http://dscotmiller.blogspot.com/2009/05/afrosurreal.html. Parris, Amanda. “Marvel’s Black Panther is just the start. Why a new movement in black art is coming to Canada” http://www.cbc.ca/arts/marvel-s-black-panther-is-just-the-start-why-a-new-movement-in-black-art-is-coming-to-canada-1.3815988. “Wangechi Mutu Exhibited At The Saatchi Gallery.” www.saatchigallery.com/artists/wangechi_mutu.html Sato, Paula. “Wifredo Lam, the Shango Priestess, and the Femme Cheval.” Journal of International Women’s Studies, vol. 17, no. 3, Aug. 2016, pp. 91-101. EBSCOhost. Spencer, Rochelle. “Afro-Surreal and Afrofuturistic Cinematic Storytelling in Junot Díaz’s the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Colson Whitehead’s Zone One.” Pivot: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, Jan. 2016, p. 209.
