Afrofuturists are a group of people of the African Diaspora whose philosophy is postmodern; yet, their viewpoint is of Afrofuturism which is described as: “a way of looking at the world; it’s a sort of canopy for looking at Black diasporic artistic production. It’s even an epistemology that is really about thinking about the future, thinking about the subject position of Black people and how that’s both alienating and about alienation and because the alien becomes to figure quite centrally in Afrofuturism—the outsider figure. It’s also about aspirations in majornity and having a place in majornity and it’s about speculation and utopia. Part of why it’s Afrofuturism in particular is that part of resilience in Black culture and Black life is about imagining the impossible, imagining a better place, a different world” (Alondra Nelson, 2010)
I AM Something Like A Hybrid Chic...
constantly exploring the concept of AfroFuturism, which re-mixes, past and present ideologies that are grounded in the African Diaspora experience with future "imagined" ideas. As an Afrofuturist artist my work seeks to visually answer the questions of what it means to be an African American/Black American woman with postmodern views journeying through various subcultures—in a globalized world—while imagining the next shift in the continuum of Black women who also journey. Employing the Sankofa principle "it is not wrong for one to go back and take that which they have forgotten" or "simply go back and take" becomes the root of my visual art. Like a time traveler, I move through the space-time continuum of past, present, future and take from that space. Journeying back, I remix that from which I took and author a colony of hybrid chics into the past, present and future spaces.
The Past section in the continuum of AfroFuturism explores African American culture, African culture, Victorian culture, Neo-Impressionism, POP Art, and textile design. The Present focuses on the continuum of African American culture as well as, textile design, fashion, contemporary African art and globalized art cultures i.e. Japanese art and subcultures and American popular culture. Future ideas are expressed with the dominant themes throughout my work: women, femininity, the aesthetics of beauty—I imagine hybrid chics—a colony of multi-faceted and peculiar women who are powerhouses. What are their powers? How do they handle their power? What are their characteristics? What are their influences? What do they advocate? and several other questions that continuously emerge. Therefore, my artwork transcends solely "looking at Black diasporic artistic production"—it also looks to globalized artistic production.
My art is colorful, geometric, repetitious, layered, re-mixed and born out of self-realization. I have come to realize that there is a certain beauty in questioning and examining the dichotomy of identity—ethnic, feminine, cultural and sub-cultural.
Layers are intricately built within my artwork as a symbolic device to evoke the shifts in the African American/Black American continuum. The use of geometrics and glitter in my work are for transcendence. Black frames and borders are reminiscent of the 17th century Dutch historical use of ebonizing their frames to seek simplicity as opposed to their French counterparts opulent gold framing. As well, it is symbolic for simply framing my work within a Black context and the racial borders it may imply in the U.S. art world where my ethnic identity is largely focused on more so than my national identity, cultural or sub-cultural identity. Within this context my artwork has the possibility of being viewed in the U.S. as only Black art rather than American art of the AfroFuturistic genre. In the spirit of transcendence it has to be understood that I AM pluralistic and therefore, so is my artistic production.
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