Masquerade… evolution of the black body & The Black Paintings (fear of Black consciousness) 

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Masquerade… evolution of the black body has evolved from previous masquerade sculptural work, which explored a wider post-colonial conversation in relation to the black / African and white / European. The work explores our common ontology and the road travelled and how do we embrace the now for all its good and failings. Wrapping the work in the black plastic skin acknowledges we are a product of our cultural heritage, with our visual physical and metaphysical presence. The work gets to a deeper understanding of the complexities of who we are as humans, from all sectors of society – with the evolution of man, comes the evolution of racial politics.

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Masquerade… evolution of the black body honours the black body for its survival through the centuries, acting as a cocoon for its next state of being, which will also face many challenges.

The black skin through millennia has had negative connotations projected on it; to an extent in some sectors of society there are forecast of the unborn black childs’ trajectory through life. From the outside the black skin has become a signifier of a range of narratives and to some degree through centuries of conditioning, the black mind has consumed and embrace these narratives.

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The objects beneath the black shiny plastic are symbols of history, now, myth and fact; all consumed and processed into the making of the black body. In some ways the work may attempt to neatly wrap up the historical racial politics into a convenient package, which allows us to stride forward, but the bulging lumps and stretch marks may suggest there is more tension lying beneath the surface to come – with the far right are on the move again, the warning signs are there.

 

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the body is a site of contested meanings signifies the historicity of its being as

lived and meant within the interstices of social semiotics, institutional forces, and

various discursive frames of references.

George Yancy[1]

 

 

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[1] Yancy George, Black Bodies, White Gaze   The Continuing Significance of Race. Page 17

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, INC. Plymouth United Kingdom. 2008