Through their art, Black artists show their individuality and uniqueness, which expands our ideas of blackness. From the music of Blood Orange and Nina Simone to Julie Dash’s movie Daughters of the Dust (1991) to Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun (1959), artwork produces knowledge that informs us about the existence of blackness apart from limited ideas of black people. Kevin Quashie argues “the representation of black subjectivity as resistant has become a convenient simplification of what is surely more complicated…” (Quashie 2012, 133). Blackness reflected in art reflects the reality of black people’s lives.
Nina Simone was an artist that Imani Perry says “…blended classical, jazz, pop, and blues tunes and cultivated a distinct genre- and gender-bending back-of-throat vocal sound” (Perry 2018, 131). Her music was a way of breaking the stereotypes and expectations society had of black female artists. In Daughters of the Dust, Julie Dash shows the intergenerational tensions as one family, coming together for a reunion, struggles with the influences of the past on familial ties in the present, in the context of early 20th-century migration. While in A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry teaches us about the realities of mid 20th century Chicago life, for three-generations in a working-class.
Along with these posts, our class curated a playlist of songs by black artists that explore other themes we have discussed in this course.
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Guava Island
Donald Glover’s short film “Guava Island,” released in April 2019, grounds analysis of capitalism, violence, and power in African diasporic artistic practices. Filmed in Cuba and featuring beautiful shots of sparkling, crashing waves, and glittering sand, the movie juxtaposes the calm radiance of the island with the sterile mechanics of factories. Described as a former magical paradise created by ancient gods, the film focuses on the currently industrialized Guava Island and its people.
Glover’s character, Deni Maroon, works in the factory while also creating music in his free time. His inspiration comes from his girlfriend Kefi, a seamstress in the factory, played by music and beauty icon Rihanna. Deni’s music ranges from an angry beratement of the working class’ exploitation to love songs on the beach to a melancholy reflection on the impacts of unnecessary and fast-paced development on our natural resources. Most importantly, however, Deni’s music serves as a way to unify and celebrate the working class that toils away in the factories while the owner, Red, turns a profit. When Red attempts to stop Deni from playing music, Deni defies the orders and throws a festival for the people. Without giving away the end of the film, Deni’s music serves to inspire a revolution against unfair working conditions and power structures that destroy his hopes and ambitions. Art functions as both a labor of love and practice, one that sustains Deni and Kefi while fueling rebellion.
The social and political symbolism of Guava Island operates through multiple processes that draw on our class’ conversations concerning surrender and resistance. Glover’s conception of class struggle draws on the connection between bodies – bodies of water, human bodies, and the social body. In the clip featured below, Deni expresses his love for Kefi while dancing by the Caribbean waves, linking the lovers’ intimacy with the land and the ocean. His carefree movements, set to the live drumming, showcases not just the loveliness of Guava Island but his complete surrender to the immediacy of the moment. And it is precisely because of the intensity of his love, not just for Kefi but for the land and his people, that Deni ultimately chooses to pursue an act of resistance on the streets. Through Guava Island, surrender and resistance emerge as themes that both define and support one another.
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Carrie Mae Weems, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, 1995-1996, 33 toned prints
http://carriemaeweems.net/galleries/from-here.htmL
When viewing Carrie Mae Weems’ photographs, I was instantly struck by the objectification of black bodies in contrast with the text and lettering overlapping the image. The photo series features photographs that were reprinted and redesigned for recuperative purposes In this series Weems’ highlights the history that exists in the history of African Americans as they were transformed through dehumanization and objectification. For the purpose of this post, I would like to focus on four photographs, A Negroid Type / You Became a Scientific Profile / An Anthropological Debate / & A Photographic Subject.
This part of the series Weems found while searching in Harvard Universities archive, and found the original daguerreotypes taken by J.T Zealy. These daguerreotypes were photos of an enslaved family showing Delia, Renty, Drana, and Jack. The motivation for these images served to support racial inferiority through science. Zealy was a scientist who believed in phrenology and saw photography as scientific. These images represented the objectification of these enslaved people and the dehumanizing effects this science had on them.
Weems’ then takes these daguerreotypes and reconstructs them through a transformation into art where she gives them agency. The prints are taken and undergo a chromogenic coloring process that gives the overly contrasted red. This red color takes the original prints and transforms them into her own. The text deliberately addresses the history that existed and makes it known that these actions were placed onto them. Drana, Renty, Delia, and Jack were enslaved people who became “photographic subjects, a scientific profile, anthropological debate, etc; The act of transformation and reconstruction is what I argue to be art and knowledge production as Weems’ takes the action of giving back agency by addressing a history filled with gaps. The act These photographs are used to confront, inform and acknowledge this violent history that exists
And impressively so uses the medium of photography to do so. Weems not only acknowledges the violent history of African Americans but the violent history that has existed with photography.
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Lorraine O’Grady, Art Is…, 1983, 40 Photographs
This is a phenomenal series because the use of frames breaks down the hierarchy between viewers and the types of blackness that are portrayed. Through art O’Grady emphasizes African-American subjectivity and creates a space for blacks to actively produce and contribute to the definitions of blackness both in and out of frame. O’Grady took the set of 40 photos in 1983 during an interactive performance piece she organized, titled Art is… In the middle of Harlem, O’Grady and the performers create a space for African-Americans to be the subjects of art and display Black joy, Black innocence, and Black love. These forms of blackness are typically hidden or tainted by stereotypes and racialized narratives created out of fear.
So much of our understanding of people and culture is related to the types of mass media and pop culture we encounter. At an early age, we become socialized to fear and hate many aspects of blackness because it is constantly linked to resistance, criminality, poor standards of living, and much more that go against white American standards. But the picture frames draw the audience’s attention to the variety of blackness. More importantly, the pictures illustrate blacks engaging with Quashie’s theory of the quiet and surrendering to the interior. Quashie claims that black people are constantly thought of as a monolithic identity and linked to resistance. This prohibits black expression and exploration of their personal desires, beliefs, and more. He defines the quiet as, “… a metaphor for the full range of one’s inner life – one’s desires, ambitions, hungers, vulnerabilities, fears” (6). The interior is the resivoir of a persons’ quiet and allows for “creativity beyond the public face of stereotype and limited imagination” The concept of the interior is actualized through O’Grady’s, because convey genuine joy, innocence, and love without thinking of what it means to be black; they make their interior reality and open to public consumption. Lorraine O’Grady’s series of photographs are significant because her images appear to be for black consumers –not whites–, but she does welcome whites who wish to understand and disseminate their fears of blacks and blackness.
The juxtaposition of physical frames and blackness are extremely significant as they combat these negative assumptions and give blacks authority over their image. Generally, the only time blacks receive media attention is when they commit a crime or are being resistant to white American standards of living. Rather than reproducing these tired and offensive images, the frames capture overlooked aspects of blackness such as joy, innocence, and love. In these images blacks are not forcing smiles or movements that would articulate expectations of blackness; we see blacks acting as themselves in the most genuine form. The frames allow blacks to give light to the unique and taken for the granted reality of blackness. Thereby making blackness less scary, threatening, and mysterious. By giving blacks the agency to produce art in their own image, blackness can be easily understood and defined separately from resistance, criminality, and whiteness.