ABOUT MY WATSON
In my research I explore formal elements such as color, line and scale in Sub-Saharan African Contemporary Art as a Visual Love Language that contributes to constitutive representations of Africanity (by which I mean parts of a larger expression of Africanness that cannot be wholly articulated or re-presented, depictions that are creatively constructed). I will use formal art analysis to center Diaspora-Love in textiles, sculptures, paintings and photographs to form critique of racist ontologies formed during the Age of Reason, to investigate a relationship between reason or logic, and faith and spiritual knowing, to expose capitalist-racist-patriarchal fabrications of race as a biological determinant, and to emphasize the supernatural in creativity. My current itinerary is Indonesia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and France. Each country I have chosen contributes to my research in context, content, form and style of contemporary Sub-Saharan African Arts as I make meaning of Visual AfroDiaspora-Love Languages in my generation.
The development of essentialist bio-logics by human and natural scientists during the Age of Reason,17th through 18th century, constructed the notion of race and racial hierarchy along a color spectrum: white, yellow, red and black. Racism as a constructed bio-logic claims that the essence of a person or people can be categorized by morality, intelligence, culture, sexuality, art, and beauty; and that those categories fall into a natural hierarchy that can be assessed by the physical appearance of the person or peoples. Racism as an ontology insists that this connection is a scientific discovery of nature, but truly is is a man-made system of thought that is upheld by opposing binaries and enforced by interlocking systems of domination. These include include Hollywood media, the military and prison industrial complexes, the pornography industry, imperial education, and neoliberal colonialism. The scientists of the Age of Reason - physiognomists, psychologists, phrenologists, anthropologists, biologists - created the notion of race through spoken, written and visual languages to articulate white supremacy in opposition with Africanity. Color, line and scale in contemporary African Art will be the main language systems I focus on to spotlight Visual Love Languages whose work is constitutive of Africanity and regards race as a floating signifier.
My perspective in this research is a continuation of my undergraduate learning about Race and Media from the theories of Stuart Hall, Bell Hooks, Toni Morrison, Christianity. My sincerest gratitude to those discipling me, and the incredible professors from the Africana Studies and Media Studies departments at the Claremont Colleges, from whom I've learned far more than could come through any textbook.
Influential Sources:
Hall, Stuart. Representation & Media. Northampton, MA, Media Education Foundation, 1997.
Hooks, Bell. Black Looks, Race and Representation. Boston, MA, South End Press, 1992.
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