Black People

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      A New Generation Pushes Nashville to Address Racism in Its Ranks

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA New Generation Pushes Nashville to Address Racism in Its RanksA small contingent of country artists and industry players have been speaking up in a business that likes to shut down dissent.Mickey Guyton, the only Black female country singer signed to a major label, quickly tweeted a challenge to Nashville after the star Morgan Wallen was caught on video using a racial slur.Credit…Mark Humphrey/Associated PressFeb. 12, 2021Less than 30 minutes after TMZ posted a video of the country star Morgan Wallen using a racial slur on Feb. 2, Mickey Guyton, the only Black female country singer signed to a major label, tweeted her reaction: “The hate runs deep.”She added, “How many passes will you continue to give?” and “So what exactly are y’all going to do about it. Crickets won’t work this time.”A few other mainstream country artists commented about the incident on social media, but many figured Nashville would do as it has almost always done when one of its stars is under fire: circle the wagons and shut up. “It’s been the norm for country artists to stay silent and not use their platform for controversy,” said Leslie Fram, CMT’s senior vice president of music strategy.By the following day though, radio conglomerates including iHeartMedia, Cumulus and Entercom pulled Wallen’s songs from rotation at hundreds of stations, and major streaming services removed him from playlists. CMT stopped running his videos. The Academy of Country Music declared him ineligible for its upcoming awards. All this while Wallen’s second album, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” topped the Billboard 200 chart for the third straight week.While Guyton’s tweets alone weren’t responsible for the swift rebuke, she is one of a small contingent of mostly female artists — among them Cam, Maren Morris, Margo Price and Amanda Shires — and industry players whose advocacy has pushed the country music business to begin confronting issues of racism and diversity that go beyond one artist’s misdeeds.“I was really encouraged by how fast every group in the industry showed up,” said Cam, a Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter. “But I don’t think aha moments to call someone on something so ingrained in everyone is going to be the tide changer.”“I’d assume a lot of males aren’t speaking out because they’re comfortable in their places of power and money,” said Amanda Shires.Credit…Mark Zaleski/Associated PressThe work these women do isn’t easy to quantify. Much of it is about deliberately nudging the public conversation in Nashville toward uncomfortable questions about racial equity. That can mean using social media to trumpet a book like Layla F. Saad’s “Me and White Supremacy” or excoriate the band formerly known as Lady Antebellum for tangling with a Black artist over the name Lady A. Other times, it’s participating in diversity and inclusion task forces. In November, when Morris was named female vocalist of the year at the Country Music Association Awards, she used her acceptance speech to highlight the struggle of Black women in country music, including Guyton, Rissi Palmer, Yola and Brittney Spencer.That it’s often been a group of women who speak the loudest is perhaps unsurprising. Female artists have faced huge barriers in the industry themselves, from sexual harassment and objectification to unwritten rules limiting airplay for women.“In the female experience, you understand what it is to be the underdog, to come into a situation that’s mostly white-male-driven and try to assert yourself,” said Palmer, who hosts an Apple Music radio show called Color Me Country that spotlights the genre’s Black, Indigenous and Latino roots.Shires, a singer-songwriter who also performs alongside Morris in the Highwomen, put it bluntly: “I’d assume a lot of males aren’t speaking out because they’re comfortable in their places of power and money. Why would they want it to change?”The story of male artists’ dominance in country music is a long-running one. Between 2014 and 2018, 84 percent of artists on Billboard’s year-end country charts were men, according to a study by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California.The relative silence of many of country’s biggest stars, male and female, is partly habit but also partly economics. Whether stars and gatekeepers are indifferent to racism or not, they fear fans are.“If they’re worried they’re going to financially take a fall, they keep their mouths shut,” said Price. “They’d rather keep that rebel dollar.”“For three days, I was threatened, called a racist, a bigot, a nobody,” Rissi Palmer said of the consequences of speaking up online after Charley Pride’s death.Credit… Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesBut crediting these mostly white women for being country’s social conscience is itself indicative of the larger problem. “White women speaking up is a result of we don’t let Black women speak up,” said Cam. With a few frequently noted exceptions, in Nashville, she said, “Black people aren’t even allowed in the door, cannot be in writing rooms, cannot get signed, don’t have a Twitter following, so you never hear them.”Part of this work is amplifying those marginalized voices. Shires and Morris have worked with both Spencer and Yola. Morris, Cam and Guyton are part of a group text with Palmer and Andrea Williams, a Black journalist and author based in Nashville, where they share reading suggestions, relay personal experiences and strategize.“How is it that two white women even partially understand what the experience is like for Black people in country?” asked Cam. “It’s because we’re learning from Black women. We watched what’s going on with Mickey and talked to her.” Cam said she and Morris use their platforms to share what they’re learning more widely.Williams, a lively Twitter presence, hasn’t shied from needling the ideologically like-minded — including Morris, and Shires’ husband, Jason Isbell — when she feels they’ve fallen short in bids to be good allies. “I’d rather people not say anything than say the wrong thing,” she said. “Sometimes, you need to listen and learn.” She pointed out that two of the first artists to respond to the Wallen incident, Kelsea Ballerini and Cassadee Pope, posted that his behavior “does not represent” country music.“That’s more hurtful than people who didn’t say anything because you’re diminishing the very real experiences of people who know for a fact this is actually indicative of the way this entire industry works,” she said.Cam stressed the importance of white artists listening to and learning from Black people before speaking out: “We watched what’s going on with Mickey and talked to her.”Credit…Frank Hoensch/Redfern, via Getty ImagesAccording to Williams, focusing on gender obscures country music’s “original sin”: “Country was created with the sole intent of marketing to a particular racial demographic. We divided Southern music into white hillbilly records and Black race records. This dividing line is as stark now as in the 1920s,” she said.This current reckoning traces to last summer’s nationwide Black Lives Matter protests. Just days after George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police, Guyton released the startlingly personal “Black Like Me” and country’s only mainstream male artists of color — Darius Rucker, Kane Brown and Jimmie Allen — spoke forthrightly about their own experiences, while the rest of the country music industry largely struggled to meet the moment. Other artists and executives were quick to share supportive hashtags but in a genre where mainstream Black performers can be counted on one hand and Black faces are hardly any more common behind the scenes, their efforts felt insubstantial.Lorie Liebig, a Nashville-based publicist and journalist, began compiling a Google Doc tracking what country artists had posted — or not posted — in support of Black Lives Matter. Shires was among the first to share the spreadsheet widely, but as it was disseminated, the harshest reactions often were aimed at Liebig herself.“There was a day when it first hit, my Twitter was just cascading with negative responses,” she said. “A lot were saying I was racist toward white people. I ended up being doxxed. They posted my parents’ address.”Many of these women have faced similar bile. “I’ve been called pretty much every name in the book,” said Price. “I’ve had people send me threatening DMs. I’m sure it’s cost me album and ticket sales.”After the Black country pioneer Charley Pride’s death in December, Palmer criticized eulogies that whitewashed his legacy. “For three days, I was threatened, called a racist, a bigot, a nobody,” she said. “I’ve been called a Nazi propagandist, which was my favorite.”But the steady pressure these women have been exerting seems to be starting to shift the conversation. While it remains to be seen whether the consequences Wallen has faced signal any enduring appetite for change — he returned for a fourth week at No. 1 after the incident, and was not roundly condemned by Nashville, where defenders and sympathetic voices spoke up on his behalf — there are signs the ground is moving. Four of the 10 acts chosen for CMT’s “Next Women of Country” this year are Black. The National Museum of African American Music recently opened in downtown Nashville — across the street from country music’s symbolic home, the Ryman Auditorium.“We’re a long way from seeing sweeping changes but every time the light bulb goes on for somebody else, we’re closer,” said Williams. “Because as we all come together, and we’re all firing texts back and forth at midnight in these group chats, we’re more powerful than any of us as individuals. All we need is more people to join the fight.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Theater

      Exploring Race and Resistance for Young Audiences

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeMake: BirriaExplore: ‘Bridgerton’ StyleParent: With ImprovRead: Joyce Carol OatesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookExploring Race and Resistance for Young AudiencesA Harriet Tubman monologue, an animated “Sit-In” and a toy theater short about medical inequity deliver useful messages through varied mediums.Janet (center) intends to stage a protest over climate change in the animated “Sit-In.”Credit…via Alliance TheaterFeb. 9, 2021How can you build a hopeful future without first learning from the painful past?This question, which has arisen repeatedly over the last year, resonates in three new streaming theater productions for young people. Directed toward audiences 9 and older, each uses African-American history to reflect on current issues, including the Black Lives Matter movement, climate change and the coronavirus pandemic. Frequently unsparing in detail — and even in language — these works should inspire discussions well beyond Black History Month.“A Tribe Called Tubman,” from TheaterWorksUSA, is the most fully realized, incisive and moving of the shows, both because of its length — 42 minutes — and its reliance on an actor’s presence. (The other productions feature animation or puppetry.) Available indefinitely on TWUSA.TV, a platform that the company developed for its own work and that of other family-theater producers, the play stars Jada Suzanne Dixon as a serene and commanding Harriet Tubman, the escaped slave who became a leader of the Underground Railroad. (You must wait until the end to discover the identity of the tribe in the title.)Jada Suzanne Dixon as the title character in Idris Goodwin’s “A Tribe Called Tubman.”Credit…via TheaterWorksUSACasually dressed in contemporary clothes, Dixon spends much of her time in a simple black chair. But she doesn’t need to stride the stage. Written and directed by Idris Goodwin, the play refuses to enshrine Tubman as a towering heroine of near-mythical powers. “What if I was just as ordinary as anyone else?” she asks.Speaking conversationally and occasionally singing, she relates her experiences, which were far from ordinary. But they were human, and in portraying her as a flesh-and-blood woman, the script demonstrates that it is courageous people, not gods, who bring about social change.The show does, however, have a mystical side. Tubman says she has died twice and will die again. The first time was when her skull was struck by a metal bar thrown by an overseer trying to stop a fleeing slave. (Imitating that white man’s rage, she shouts the ugliest of racial slurs.) The second occasion was when she succumbed to pneumonia in 1913. And why is she here again?“The knee is still on our necks,” says Tubman, who was often called Moses. Having advised young audiences on how to pursue justice, she adds, “Maybe what I am now is that burning bush.”The Alliance Theater decided to animate Pearl Cleage’s “Sit-In” script when live performance became impossible.Credit…via Alliance TheaterAnother incendiary phrase — “Our house is on fire” — propels “Sit-In,” produced by Alliance Theater in Atlanta. This statement refers to global warming rather than civil rights, although Janet (Eden Luse), an 11-year-old African-American girl, soon learns how the struggles surrounding these issues are related.Janet finds herself in conflict with her best friends, Mary Beth (Bella Fraker) and Consuelo (Lena Castro), after she tells them she can’t be part of their singing trio at the talent show because she intends to stage a school sit-in about climate change. Consuelo retaliates by saying she won’t sing with Janet at an upcoming rally.Torn, and facing opposition at home and at school — she’s threatened with expulsion — Janet resolves her dilemma only after talking to her grandfather (L Warren Young), who tells her of his own participation in the Atlanta Student Movement in 1960.Inspired by “Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down,” a picture book created by the married couple Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney, the play artfully transforms a true story of young Black men 60 years ago into a dramatic narrative about three contemporary girls of varying ethnicities.Faced with the Covid lockdown, the playwright Pearl Cleage and the director Mark Valdez worked with Alliance and the Palette Group to turn the production into a 33-minute animated film. The result incorporates a rich soundtrack (by Eugene H. Russell IV) and a vivid interplay of images, including gritty footage of the real 1960s lunch counter sit-ins.Streaming on Alliance’s website and on TWUSA.TV through June 30, “Sit-In” educates and entertains, though I wish it had been longer. The play illustrates that protest carries risks, but ends before you learn the consequences of the 21st-century student activism it depicts.The set and characters in “Diamond’s Dream,” like this image inside a train car, are constructed from detailed cutouts.Credit…via Chicago Children’s TheaterThe visually mesmerizing “Diamond’s Dream,” presented by Chicago Children’s Theater, is even shorter — just under 18 minutes. Created by Jerrell L. Henderson (who also directed) and Caitlin McLeod (who designed it), this toy theater production features a set and characters constructed from meticulously detailed cutouts. The scrolling painterly backdrops and Daniel Ison’s soundtrack enhance the feeling that you’re inside an L train in Chicago.The play, which streams free on the company’s YouTube channel, CCTv, through June 22, unfolds in the present day, when Diamond (Davu Smith), an African-American youth wearing a surgical mask, is on his way to visit his dying grandmother. (Whether she has Covid-19 is unclear.) After dozing in his empty train car, he suddenly encounters a Black girl (Amira Danan), who tells him she’s a lost spirit who can’t recall her identity. She remembers only how “the colored people got hit by the flu, the big flu” and how “an angry mob” arrived as she was dying.The “big flu” is the 1918 pandemic, and the “angry mob” refers to attacks by white rioters during what is now known as the Red Summer of 1919, but children are unlikely to grasp this unless they consult an accompanying online study guide. And although the production offers an emotional resolution, it still feels like only a tantalizing taste of what deserved to be a bigger project. Parents and teachers will have to help young viewers investigate the subjects — racial inequities in housing and health care, the disproportionate effects of disease on minorities — that “Diamond’s Dream” raises yet doesn’t fully explore.What can’t be ignored is that these historical struggles continue. Or, as Harriet Tubman puts it in Goodwin’s play, “The scars are still fresh.”A Tribe Called TubmanOn TWUSA.TVSit-InThrough June 30; alliancetheatre.orgDiamond’s DreamOn YouTube through June 22; chicagochildrenstheatre.orgAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in Television

      ‘Black Art: In the Absence of Light’ Reveals a History of Neglect and Triumph

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘Black Art: In the Absence of Light’ Reveals a History of Neglect and TriumphAn HBO documentary explores two centuries of art by African-Americans, and the path they forged for contemporary Black artists.Kerry James Marshall’s ‘‘Untitled (Studio)’’ (2014) appears in “Black Art: In the Absence of Light,” a documentary film directed by Sam Pollard.Credit…HBOFeb. 8, 2021Updated 3:56 p.m. ETBlack Art: In the Absence of LightNYT Critic’s Pick“This is Black art. And it matters. And it’s been going on for two hundred years. Deal with it.”So declares the art historian Maurice Berger toward the beginning of “Black Art: In the Absence of Light,” a rich and absorbing documentary directed by Sam Pollard (“MLK/FBI”) and debuting on HBO Tuesday night.The feature-length film, assembled from interviews with contemporary artists, curators and scholars, was inspired by a single 1976 exhibition, “Two Centuries of Black American Art,” the first large-scale survey of African-American artists. Organized by the artist David C. Driskell, who was then-head of the art department at Fisk University, it included some 200 works dating from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century, and advanced a history that few Americans, including art professionals, even knew existed.The HBO documentary recalls a landmark show “Two Centuries of Black American Art” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976. It was organized by David C. Driskell.Credit…Museum Associates/LACMAThe press gave that survey a mixed reception. Some writers griped that it was more about sociology than art (Driskell himself didn’t entirely disagree). But the show was a popular hit. At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where it originated, and then at major museums in Dallas, Atlanta and Brooklyn, people lined up to see it.What they were seeing was that Black artists had always done distinctive work in parallel to, and some within, a white-dominated mainstream that ignored them. And they were seeing that Black artists had consistently made, and are continuing to make, some of the most conceptually exciting and urgent-minded American art, period — a reality only quite recently acknowledged by the art world at large, as reflected in exhibitions, sales and critical attention.Driskell appeared in the HBO documentary before he died last year. “Isolation isn’t, and never was, the Black artist’s goal,” he said. “He has tried to be part and parcel of the mainstream, only to be shut out.”Credit…HBOThe HBO documentary introduces us to this history of long neglect and recent correction through the eloquent voices of three people who lived both sides of it: Driskell, a revered painter and teacher; Mary Schmidt Campbell, the president of Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga., and former director of the Studio Museum in Harlem; and Berger, an esteemed art historian and curator. (The film is dedicated to the two men, both of whom died from complications related to Covid-19 in 2020, Driskell at 88, Berger at 63.)They’re surrounded by artists, most of them painters, of various generations. Some had careers that were well underway by 1976 (Betye Saar, for example, and Richard Mayhew, who was in the survey). Others were, at that point, just starting out in the field. (Kerry James Marshall remembers being blown away by a visit to the show when he was 21). Still others — Kehinde Wiley (born 1977) and Jordan Casteel (born 1989) — weren’t born when the survey opened but still count themselves among its beneficiaries.The portraitist Jordan Casteel discusses how she finds her subjects on streets.Credit…HBOMarshall in his studio explains the many colors he uses that are “Black.”Credit…HBOThe question arises early in the film — in a 1970s “Today Show” interview with Driskell by Tom Brokaw — as to whether the very use of the label “Black American art” isn’t itself a form of imposed isolation. Yes, Driskell says, but in this case a strategic one. “Isolation isn’t, and never was, the Black artist’s goal. He has tried to be part and parcel of the mainstream, only to be shut out. Had this exhibition not been organized many of the artists in it would never have been seen.”The film refers, in shorthand form, to past examples of shutting-out. There’s a reference to the Metropolitan Museum’s 1969 “Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900-1968,” an exhibition that was advertised as introducing Black creativity to the Met but that contained little in the way of art. And mention is made of artists’ protests of the Whitney Museum’s 1971 survey “Contemporary Black Artists in America,” which was left entirely in the hands of a white curator.A book of essays titled “Black Art Notes,” printed that year in response to the Whitney show, accused white museums of “artwashing” through the token inclusion of African-American work, a charge that has continuing pertinence. (The collection was recently reissued, in a facsimile edition, by Primary Information, a nonprofit press in Brooklyn.) Even before the Met and Whitney shows, Black artists saw the clear necessity of taking control of how and where their art was seen into their own hands. Ethnically specific museums began to spring up — outstandingly, in 1968, the Studio Museum in Harlem.The 1969 exhibition “Harlem on My Mind” resulted in demonstrators picketing outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Credit…Jack Manning/The New York TimesWe’re talking about a dense, complex history. No one film can hope to get all of it, and this one leaves a lot out. (Mention of the Black Power movement is all but absent here.) Still, there’s a lot, encapsulated in short, deft commentary by scholars and curators, among them Campbell, Sarah Lewis of Harvard University, Richard J. Powell of Duke University, and Thelma Golden, the current director and chief curator of the Studio Museum. (Golden is a consulting producer of the film. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is its executive producer.)Rightfully, and delightfully, the majority of voices are those of active artists. Faith Ringgold, now 90, wasn’t in the 1976 show, or in big museums much at all, because, she asserts, her work was too political and because she’s female. (Of the 63 artists in “Two Centuries of Black American Art,” 54 were male.) Her solution? “I just stay out till I get in,” she says. And persisting has paid off: Her monumental 1967 painting “American People Series #20: Die” has pride of place in the Museum of Modern Art’s current permanent collection rehang.)Faith Ringgold said she was excluded from the black and mainstream art movement because she was female. “I just stay out till I get in,” she said.Credit…HBOThe artist Fred Wilson explains his use of objects and cultural symbols to explore historical narratives in sculptures and installations.Credit…HBOParticularly interesting are segments showing artists at work and talking about what they’re doing as they’re doing it. We visit Marshall in his studio as he explains the many, many paint colors he uses that are “black.” We follow Fred Wilson into museum storage as he excavated objects that will become part of one of his history-baring installations. We watch Radcliffe Bailey transform hundreds of discarded piano keys into a Middle Passage ocean. And we tag along with the portraitist Jordan Casteel, who recently wrapped up a well-received show at the New Museum, as she seeks out sitters on Harlem streets.There’s no question that the visibility of African-American artists in the mainstream is way higher now than it’s ever been. (Thank you, Black Lives Matter.) A big uptick in shows is one measure. Landmark events like the 2018 unveiling of the Obama portraits by Wiley and Amy Sherald is another.In an interview in the film Sherald brings up this sudden surge of attention. “A lot of galleries are now picking up Black artists,” she says. “There’s this gold rush.” But where some observers would see the interest as just a next-hot-thing marketing trend driven by a branding of “Blackness,” she doesn’t. “I say it’s because we’re making some of the best work, and most relevant work.”In 2018, Kehinde Wiley, left, unveiled his painting of Barack Obama, alongside Amy Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama, at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Credit…Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesThe point of Pollard’s film, which was also the point of Driskell’s 1976 survey, is to demonstrate that, and to demonstrate that Black artists have been making some of the best work and the most relevant work for decades, centuries. But they’ve been making it mostly on the margins, beyond the white art world’s spotlights.The artist Theaster Gates, who appears toward the end of the film, sees the advantage, even the necessity, of that positioning.“Black art means that sometimes I’m making when no one’s looking,” he says. “For the most part that has been the truth of our lives. Until we own the light, I’m not happy. Until we’re in our own houses of exhibitions, of discovery, of research, until we’ve figured out a way to be masters of the world, I’d rather work in darkness. I don’t want to work only when the light comes on. My fear is that we’re being trained and conditioned to only make if there’s a light, and that makes us codependent upon a thing we don’t control. Are you willing,” he asks his fellow artists, “to make in the absence of light?”Driskell, to whom this film really belongs and with whose presence it concludes, also leaves the question of the future of Black art open-ended. Around it, he’s says, “there’s been an awakening, an enlightenment through education, a desire to want to know. On the other hand, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. : We haven’t reached the promised land. We’ve got a long way to go.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Beyond ‘Black Panther’: Afrofuturism Is Booming in Comics

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBeyond ‘Black Panther’: Afrofuturism Is Booming in ComicsA bumper crop of graphic novels and comic books melds African culture and science fiction, with influences as wide-ranging as space travel, Caribbean folklore and Janelle Monáe.“Hardears,” set on a mythical version of Barbados, is among the titles coming from Megascope this year.Credit…Abrams BooksFeb. 7, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETWhen Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, it struck the author and illustrator John Jennings as so unprecedented, such a break from American history, that it was like an event from some far-flung future.“Before then, the only time you would see a president who was Black was in a science-fiction movie,” he said in a phone interview last month. Jennings compared it to the sorts of imaginative leaps one finds in the most forward-thinking works categorized as “Afrofuturist.”This year, fans of Afrofuturism will see a bumper crop of comics and graphic novels, including the first offerings of a new imprint devoted to Black speculative fiction and reissues of Afrofuturist titles from comic-book houses like DC and Dark Horse.Afrofuturism, whether in novels, films or music, imagines worlds and futures where the African diaspora and sci-fi intersect. The term was coined by the writer Mark Dery in 1993 and has since been applied to the novels of Octavia Butler (“Kindred”), the musical stylings of the jazz composer Sun Ra and more recently films such as “Get Out” and “Black Panther,” which presented a gorgeously rendered vision of the technologically advanced, vibranium-powered nation of Wakanda.“Afrofuturism isn’t new,” said Ytasha L. Womack, a cultural critic and the author of “Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture,” a primer and history of the movement and aesthetic. “But the plethora of comics and graphic novels that are available is certainly a new experience.”Graphic novels published in January included “After the Rain,” an adaptation of a short story by the Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor, and “Infinitum,” a tale of African kings and space battles by the New York-based artist Tim Fielder.For “Infinitum,” released by the HarperCollins imprint Amistad, the artist Tim Fielder created Aja Oba, an African king cursed with eternal life. Credit…Harper CollinsThis month marks the long-awaited return of the “Black Panther” comics written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which the National Book Award-winning author began in 2016, as well as the latest installment of “Far Sector,” a series written by N.K. Jemisin and inspired by the actor and musician Janelle Monáe, about the first Black woman to become a member of the intergalactic Green Lantern Corps.Even older works are getting new looks. Black superheroes from the ’90s-era comic company Milestone — including Icon, a space alien who crash lands on Earth in 1839 and takes the form of an African-American man — are finding new readers on DC Universe Infinite, a subscription service that launched in January. Meanwhile, the Oregon-based publisher Dark Horse plans to release the comics of the Nigerian-born writer Roye Okupe, who previously self-published them, including his Afrofuturistic series “E.X.O.,” a superhero tale set in 2025 Nigeria.Comics are particularly well suited for Afrofuturism, Womack said. Many Afrofuturistic narratives are nonlinear, something that comics, with their ability to move and stack panels to play with notions of time, can convey. Comic artists can also employ visual elements such as images from the Black Arts Movement, or figures from Yoruba and Igbo mythology, in ways that aren’t available to prose writers.“Afrofuturism is constantly moving into the future and back into the past, even with the visual references they’re making,” Womack said.John Jennings is the founder and curator of Megascope, a publishing imprint “dedicated to showcasing speculative works by and about people of color.”Credit…Jamil Baldwin for The New York Times“After the Rain” marks the launch of Megascope, an imprint of the publisher Abrams “dedicated to showcasing speculative works by and about people of color.” Its advisory board includes the scholar and author Henry Louis Gates Jr.“Afrofuturism is the catchall,” Jennings, the imprint’s founder and curator, said. “It’s really Black speculative fiction. But that’s sort of a mouthful. I just don’t want people to think that Megascope is only Afrofuturist. We’re dropping horror books, crime fiction, historical fiction.”Okorafor, the author of the imprint’s leadoff title, “After the Rain,” considers her work “Africanfuturism,” a term she coined to describe a subcategory of science fiction similar to Afrofuturism, but more deeply rooted in African culture and history than in the African-American experience. “Nnedi is a very hot author right now,” Jennings said, “so I thought it would be a great kickoff.”In April, the imprint will publish “Hardears,” a fantasy-adventure story set on Jouvert Island, a version of Barbados populated by mythical creatures — giant “moongazers” and shape-shifting “soucouyants” — drawn from Caribbean folklore. “Black Star,” a cat-and-mouse tale of two astronauts stranded on a desolate planet, comes out in May.“After the Rain,” adapted from a short story by Nnedi Okorafor, was published in January.Credit…Abrams BooksA professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California at Riverside, Jennings has devoted much of his career to Afrofuturism, writing scholarly works about it and leading panels devoted to Afrofuturist comics. He has worked with the artist Stacey Robinson, as the duo “Black Kirby,” to reimagine the work of the Marvel artist Jack Kirby through an African-American lens: for example, “The Unkillable Buck,” based on “The Incredible Hulk.”To Jennings, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an Afrofuturist. “The mountaintop that Dr. King spoke about does not exist in this universe,” Jennings said. “It’s an imaginary construct of what the future could be.”For “Infinitum,” released by the HarperCollins imprint Amistad, Fielder created Aja Oba, a powerful African king cursed with eternal life. Oba travels from Africa to the United States and beyond, witnessing Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps, the rise of American slavery, the civil rights movement and (spoiler alert) the death of our solar system.Despite the fleet of spaceships on the cover, much of Fielder’s narrative is set in history. “Afrofuturists do not have the privilege, like general futurists, of just looking forward constantly,” Fielder said. “There’s so much of our work that was ignored, discarded or destroyed that, as an Afrofuturist, I’m forced to work on projects that are based in the past.”“Black Star,” a cat-and-mouse tale of two astronauts stranded on a desolate planet, comes out in May.Credit…Abrams BooksFielder’s immortal hero is also a response to the longstanding cinematic trope of Black men dying before the final credits roll. One of his strongest childhood memories was watching the Black hero’s untimely end in the 1968 horror movie “Night of the Living Dead.” “The white guys are all losing it, and it’s the one brother who keeps his wits about him,” he said. “And then he’s killed. I never forgot that.”“Infinitum” has a distinctly cinematic feel — Fielder’s influences include the “Star Wars” artist Ralph McQuarrie — and the shared references and influences between comic books and movies are likely to continue. After Coates restarts (and ends, after three issues) his run on “Black Panther,” Marvel Studios is expected to release “Black Panther II,” while over at Disney, producers are working with the comic-book company Kugali on “Iwaju,” an animated series set in a futuristic Lagos.Perhaps more than anything, Afrofuturist comics are a means of staking a racially inclusive claim on a multitude of futures. “And just because it’s about a Black subject doesn’t mean it’s just for Black people,” Jennings said. “I love Daredevil, but Marvel would never say: ‘Oh, you know what? This is just for white, poor Irish-American people.’ These stories are for everyone.”Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      Can an Abuser Make Amends? ‘The Color Purple’ Points the Way

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storycritic’s notebookCan an Abuser Make Amends? ‘The Color Purple’ Points the WayAfter #MeToo, as movies and TV grapple with issues of rape, revenge and restorative justice, a survivor reconsiders a male character at a crossroads.In the movie adaptation of “The Color Purple,” Celie, center, played by Whoopi Goldberg, escapes an abusive relationship and finds a better life with Shug (Margaret Avery) and Squeak (Rae Dawn Chong.)Credit…Warner Bros.Feb. 5, 2021Updated 6:28 p.m. ETRevenge is at the heart of “Promising Young Woman.” Not only does the film open with its main character Cassie (Carey Mulligan) targeting men who take advantage of inebriated women, but we soon realize that she does so in service of a larger goal: avenging the rape, and eventual suicide, of her best friend, Nina. Even though she ultimately appears to get justice, this result is far from gratifying. Rather, it is a sobering reminder that because most rape victims will never see their assailants held accountable in their lifetime, revenge, or at least the fantasy of it, is all that is left.To me, the movie is an example of how the #MeToo movement has influenced representations of sexual assault onscreen. Works like Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special “Nanette” and Michaela Coel’s breakout HBO show “I May Destroy You” center the voices of rape survivors, while movies like “The Assistant” and “Promising Young Woman” show the perspective of friends or female bystanders who also suffer as secondary victims of sexual assault. Unfortunately, even as the embrace of these points-of-view represents progress, these narratives also reflect a real-world legal system that repeatedly denies or delays justice to rape victims.Arabella (Michaela Coel) and Zain (Karan Gill) in a scene from HBO’s “I May Destroy You.”Credit…HBOAs both a critic and as a feminist activist, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this dilemma. And over the past two years I have been working on the book “In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece,” about Alice Walker’s groundbreaking novel that prioritized the vantage point of a rape and domestic abuse survivor named Celie. Through the redemptive arc of its antagonist, Albert, “The Color Purple,” from 1982, paved the way for today’s debates about atonement, rehabilitation and forgiveness. It anticipates the extralegal practice of restorative justice, a remedy that is intended to heal victims as well as prevent the accused from reoffending by having them accept full responsibility for their actions, while also engaging in a consensual, reparative process with their victims.When I began my research on “The Color Purple,” a story that I first read at 15, I knew that I would focus on Celie’s relationships with her sister, Nettie, her bawdy blues woman lover Shug and the defiant Sofia. Those are the Black female characters that I have turned to as I struggled with my own sexual assault as a teenager in the 1990s, the ones I highlighted to my students as a young college professor in the early 2000s, the ones I find renewed inspiration in today.But what I did not expect to find was how much my middle-aged self would be drawn to Albert, the figure Celie fearfully refers to as M______ (Mister) for most of her life. Celie is forced by Pa — who has raped and impregnated her and given away her two children — to marry Albert, a much older widower. When Celie joins Albert’s family, he continually beats her as she raises his children and tends to his house. It is only over time that we realize how broken he is, defeated both by Jim Crow and his domineering father, who prevented him from marrying his life’s love, Shug. In other words, while his rage is never justified, the novel seeks to understand its origins, giving it a powerful story line that was often initially overlooked by the novel’s biggest detractors.Though “The Color Purple” earned Walker a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the novel also generated much criticism, mostly from well-known Black male writers and community activists who were offended by the depiction of abuse by Pa and Albert and by Celie healing from that violence in a romantic relationship with Shug. By the time the movie debuted in 1985, Walker and the filmmakers were ill-prepared to defend themselves against accusations that the movie reproduced vicious stereotypes about African-American men. Such condemnations overlooked the healing made possible by Albert’s own desire to make amends.After Celie discovers that Albert has been hiding Nettie’s letters from her for decades, she leaves with Shug, and curses Albert.Soon Albert’s life — his farm, his home, his family — fall apart, forcing him to make a critical decision: either crumble or find a way to reconcile with Celie. And so he rises to the occasion, and begins the long journey of repairing his relationships with his son and grandchildren, and in time, Celie and her children.Celie (Goldberg) rebels against the abusive Albert (Danny Glover) on a day she prepares to leave him. Credit…Warner Bros.Albert’s arc, however, was far more abbreviated in the Oscar-nominated movie, in which he was indelibly played by Danny Glover. But even with his limited transformation onscreen, I see Albert anew when I watch the movie now.Glover imbued his character with such charisma, dignity and depth that Albert is neither pure villain nor a blameless victim. Instead, he is a Black man at a crossroads and thus has the opportunity to reimagine what paths of masculinity lie ahead.But Walker’s vision of Albert was realized in the musical adaptation that premiered on Broadway in 2005 and even more fully in a revival in 2015 with Isaiah Johnson in the role. In that version, Albert’s breakdown is even more totalizing, making his turnaround all the more meaningful, and memorable.“Albert gets his redemption and he does something,” said John Doyle, the director of the Tony-winning revival. “He does things for the children of the community and maybe that’s all a little through a pink gauze. But there’s something wonderful about that.”These days as we, on college campuses, in the halls of Congress, or in our homes, argue about how best to forgive or punish those who have harmed others, we often miss a crucial aspect of the debate that might help us move forward.A scene from the Broadway musical adaptation of “The Color Purple” in 2015; from left: Jennifer Hudson as Shug, Cynthia Erivo as Celie, Isaiah Johnson as Mister/Albert and Kyle Scatliffe as Harpo.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHow does one actually atone for violence they inflict on others?Given pervasive racial bias in the criminal justice system, it makes sense that Black women, like Walker, have imagined accountability outside of the courtroom. Among recent #MeToo narratives, “I May Destroy You,” created by the Black British artist Coel, gestures to restorative justice through the relationship between Arabella (Coel) and fellow writer Zain (Karan Gill). After he removes his condom without her consent during sex, Zain is later able to earn her begrudging trust by helping her complete her book, which in turn leads to her journey of self-acceptance and rebirth.But then Zain revives his own writing career under a pseudonym. Albert embarks on the much more arduous path of acknowledging his violence and all the harm that he caused.And in the final moments of “The Color Purple” onstage, his hard work leads to him standing together with his family. He is not a hero — that status belongs to Celie, Shug and Sofia — but he still gives us a reason to hope.Because most survivors of violence will never hear an apology or benefit from such restitution, Albert remains one of the more elusive and exceptional characters in American culture, a figure that can teach us all to take accountability for our actions, and to find redemption along the way.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Museum Exploring Music’s Black Innovators Arrives in Nashville

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMuseum Exploring Music’s Black Innovators Arrives in NashvilleThe National Museum of African American Music has six interactive sections covering 50 genres of music with a focus on gospel, blues, jazz, R&B and hip-hop.Each of the museum’s galleries focuses on the development of a genre of music with African-American roots.Credit…NMAAM/353 Media GroupFeb. 5, 2021Updated 10:49 a.m. ETIf you want to trace the roots of American popular music, you have to start when Europeans brought enslaved Africans across the Middle Passage. After Emancipation, the sounds of Africa and field hollers and work hymns from the American South dispersed across the country and transformed into new forms: the blues in Mississippi, jazz in New Orleans and later house music in Chicago and hip-hop in the Bronx.Historians, anthologies and exhibitions have traced this path before, but an entire museum hasn’t been devoted to demonstrating and celebrating how Black artists fundamentally shaped American music until now. Last Saturday, the National Museum of African American Music opened in Nashville, with six interactive sections covering 50 genres of music with a focus on gospel, blues, jazz, R&B and hip-hop.The idea for the museum, which has been 22 years and $60 million in the making, originated with Francis Guess, a civil rights advocate and Nashville business leader, who shared it with T.B. Boyd III, then the president and chief executive of the R.H. Boyd Publishing Co. In the beginning, they gathered with local leaders for monthly meetings in their living rooms to raise enthusiasm and seed money.The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce conducted a feasibility study for a museum encompassing African-American culture in 2002; and in 2011, its focus was narrowed to music. With the support of the city and many community members, 56,000 square feet of the Fifth & Broadway complex in downtown Nashville were carved out for the institution. (The museum is open on Saturdays and Sundays in February, and time-slotted tickets are required for a limited number of masked visitors.)Steven Lewis, one of the museum’s curators, said that the galleries aim to show the living tradition of Black music. The more than 1,500 artifacts illustrate the experiences of everyday people, not just the famous ones. (Though the collection does feature items from Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, George Clinton, Whitney Houston and TLC.) They also show the music’s global reach.“Look at the young white British musicians from the 1960s, like the Beatles,” Lewis said in an interview. “They were listening to Muddy Waters and Son House. They found something in that music that drew them. Look at Louis Armstrong’s tours in West Africa — there was something that connected them. The African-American experience as expressed in the music is a compelling distillation of experiences of oppression, struggle and triumph that people around the world can relate to in different ways.”“Nashville needs this museum, because it’s a musical mecca,” said the blues guitarist Kevin Moore a.k.a. Keb’ Mo’.Credit…NMAAM/353 Media GroupLewis, a jazz saxophonist and ethnomusicologist, specifically looked at the impact of the Great Migration on the spread of Black music around the world. During this period between 1916 and 1970, more than six million African-Americans left agricultural work in the South for manufacturing jobs in the North and West. With the industrialization of America also came the industrialization of music — in the blues, artists like Muddy Waters went from playing acoustic guitar to the electric.In the section of the museum devoted to this moment, called “Crossroads,” artifacts on display include a lantern from the Illinois Central Railroad, a guitar and handwritten lyrics from B.B. King, a suit and shoes from Bobby “Blue” Bland, and a 78 from Black Swan Records, the first major blues and jazz record label owned by African-Americans.“Crossroads” also strives to tie the genre to the present by collaborating with living musicians like the blues guitarist Kevin Moore a.k.a. Keb’ Mo’, a Nashville local who has been involved with the museum since its conception.“Nashville needs this museum, because it’s a musical mecca,” said Moore, who is a national chair for the museum. “The average person just thinks of country music,” he added, noting that the city’s nickname Music City is said to have come from the Black vocal group the Fisk Jubilee Singers impressing Queen Victoria with a performance.One of Moore’s first red Silvertone electric guitars, an instrument that survived the 2010 Nashville flood and Moore sees as a testament to the city’s resilience, is also on display. “Some of the paint came off, and it’s a little damaged, but it’s still playable,” he said. “It’s significant to me because the Silvertone guitar from Sears is a part of my musical history. I got that one when I was 17 and it’s one of the nearest and dearest to me.”In developing “Crossroads” and the other galleries, curators made a point of spotlighting women’s contributions. “Women are the ones that started this genre,” the vocalist Shemekia Copeland said, adding that she fell in love with the blues as a child because of the way the lyrics tap into the power and struggles of Black people. “In the 1920s, it was all about female entertaining and the musicians were in the background. That changed later on when it became more guitar-driven.”Copeland believes that a museum devoted to African-Americans’ vast impact on music is critical. “The music is the people,” she said. “It’s how we’ve always expressed ourselves. If the world ended and somebody found records and they listened, it would tell the story of what happened to us culturally.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Morgan Wallen Rebuked by Music Business After Using Racial Slur

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCountry Star Morgan Wallen Rebuked by Music Business After Using Racial SlurThe musician apologized in a statement to TMZ, saying, “I used an unacceptable and inappropriate racial slur that I wish I could take back.”Radio stations and streaming services distanced themselves from Morgan Wallen, one of the top country artists, after video surfaced of him using a racial slur.Credit…Sanford Myers/Associated PressJulia Jacobs and Feb. 3, 2021Morgan Wallen, one of country music’s biggest new stars, was swiftly rebuked on Wednesday by major radio stations, streaming services, record labels, fellow artists and the CMT network after a video surfaced of him using a racial slur.The genre’s brightest new headliner so far this year, Wallen currently has the No. 1 album in the United States for three weeks running, having found traction even on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, where country has traditionally struggled. But all of that threatened to crumble starting Tuesday night, when TMZ posted a video, seemingly filmed by a neighbor, that appeared to show Wallen returning from a night out in Nashville and shouting at someone to take care of another person in his group, referring to that person with a racial slur.By morning, Spotify, Apple and some of the largest radio conglomerates in the country had removed Wallen from playlists and airwaves, while the singer’s record label and management company, Big Loud, announced that it would “suspend” his contract indefinitely. Republic Records, a division of Universal Music Group that distributes Wallen’s releases in partnership with Big Loud, said it supported the decision, adding “such behavior will not be tolerated.”Big Loud did not respond to follow-up questions about what it meant to suspend a recording contract or whether it planned to cease selling or promoting Wallen’s new album and past work.Representatives for Wallen did not immediately respond to a request for comment. TMZ reported that the singer had apologized in a statement, saying, “I’m embarrassed and sorry. I used an unacceptable and inappropriate racial slur that I wish I could take back. There are no excuses to use this type of language, ever.”But the prompt action by the industry, and especially by power players within tight-knit country music circles, seemed to signal a shift in a world that has traditionally struggled with race, representation and political issues.A major owner of country radio stations, iHeartMedia, decided to remove Wallen’s music from its playlists immediately in response to the video, a spokeswoman said, and Entercom, another large player in radio, did the same; representatives for the companies said the decisions would impact more than 150 stations. SiriusXM has pulled Wallen’s music from its platforms, which include Pandora, a spokesman said. Variety reported that Cumulus Media, another major owner of country music stations, had sent a directive to hundreds of its stations asking them to remove Wallen from their airwaves.The TV network CMT also said it was pulling all of Wallen’s appearances from its platforms. “We do not tolerate or condone words and actions that are in direct opposition to our core values that celebrate diversity, equity & inclusion,” CMT said in a statement. Later on Wednesday, the Academy of Country Music said that it would “halt Morgan Wallen’s potential involvement and eligibility” in its annual ACM Awards. The organization added that it would “expedite the offering of long-planned diversity-training resources” for its members and staff.The uproar comes as Wallen, 27, is at a high-point of his young career. He first gained national visibility as a contestant on “The Voice” in 2014, and has represented a major breakthrough for country music in the world of streaming, which now dominates how music is typically consumed but has been slower to catch on in Nashville.His latest album, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” has topped the all-genre Billboard 200 chart, and it broke the country streaming record by a wide margin, with its songs racking up 240 million streams in the first week. On Wednesday, Wallen held 17 of the Top 100 spots on Apple Music’s overall song chart, including two in its Top 10, but he had been removed from the service’s flagship Today’s Country playlist. Spotify had also removed Wallen’s music from its Hot Country playlist.Spotify declined to comment on how it would promote Wallen moving forward; Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Despite the formative roles of Black musicians in early country and hillbilly music, racial inequity has persisted for decades in the genre and conversations regarding insensitive language and popular Confederate imagery have often been shunted aside.Last year, during the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, many Nashville artists broke with tradition and addressed race directly, making statements of solidarity on social media and issuing apologies for past ignorance. The Dixie Chicks and Lady Antebellum, two best-selling acts with names that suggested the Civil War-era South, announced that they would alter their names.Beginning Tuesday night, several country music performers spoke up about Wallen’s use of the slur.Mickey Guyton, a country singer-songwriter, posted on Twitter about being a Black performer in the industry and the “vile comments” she receives daily, suggesting that Wallen’s behavior was hardly a surprise and questioning his “promises to do better.”“When I read comments saying ‘this is not who we are,’” she wrote, “I laugh because this is exactly who country music is.” Guyton recently became the first solo Black woman to be nominated in a country category at the Grammy Awards with her single “Black Like Me.”She added, “I question on a daily basis as to why I continue to fight to be in an industry that seems to hate me so much.”The country singer-songwriter Kelsea Ballerini tweeted that Wallen’s behavior “does not represent country music,” while another performer, Maren Morris, said the opposite.Wallen, has been in the limelight for the wrong reasons before. Last year, he was arrested and charged with public intoxication and disorderly conduct in downtown Nashville.Months later, he came under scrutiny after he was seen in videos on social media flouting social distancing guidelines intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus, drinking shots, kissing fans and mingling in groups while not wearing a mask during a celebration after a University of Alabama football victory.That led “Saturday Night Live” to drop Wallen from an upcoming show. Wallen apologized, saying that he planned to “take a step back from the spotlight for a little while and go work on myself.” Two months later, Wallen was invited back to perform on “S.N.L.”, and he appeared in a skit that poked fun at the incident.“To no consequences!” Wallen says in the clip, raising a beer bottle to make a toast.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 100 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Resident Artists Are Named

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyKehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Resident Artists Are NamedMembers of the global group share the painter’s passion for using art to explore social change.Kehinde Wiley at the Black Rock artist residence he founded in Dakar, Senegal, in 2019. It is welcoming its second group of artists, filmmakers and writers from around the world. Hilary Balu’s “Voyage vers Mars 5,” explores the flight of populations to other continents.Credit…Jane Hahn for The New York TimesFeb. 2, 2021Updated 2:59 p.m. ETA Congolese painter whose art reflects how globalization and consumerism have transformed African society. A Nigerian-American filmmaker whose work focuses on cultures and experiences of Africans and the diaspora. A visual activist from Texas who forces her viewers to confront issues that are deemed difficult to tackle.These are among the 16 artists selected for the 2021 residency at Black Rock Senegal, the seaside studio in the West African capital city of Dakar belonging to Kehinde Wiley, the painter best known for his portrait of former President Barack Obama.The artists, who will spend several weeks at the lavish studio along a volcanic-rock-lined shore, express themselves in a variety of formats and come from across the globe. But many in this year’s group share Wiley’s passion for using art to explore social change.His most recent works include the stained glass fresco of breakdancers in the Moynihan Train Hall and his “Rumors of War” statue in Richmond, Va. — a Black man with ponytailed dreadlocks on horseback in the style of monuments to Confederate war generals. Wiley is not part of the Black Rock selection committee, which aims to consider the class of artists as a whole and tries to pick a diverse group of residents, including personal identities and nationalities and the medium they work in.Among the residents is Hilary Balu, from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, whose recent brightly colored yet sorrowful series “Voyage vers Mars” explores the tragedy of contemporary migration — in this case the flight of a population to another continent, like astronauts leaving a destroyed earth for another planet.Hilary Balu’s “Voyage vers Mars 5,” explores the flight of populations to other continents.Credit…MAGNIN-AAbbesi Akhamie, who lives in Washington, is a Nigerian-American writer, director and producer whose latest short film, ​“The Couple Next Door” from last year, premiered at the Aspen Shortsfest and won the Audience Choice Award at the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival.Irene Antonia Diane Reece from Houston uses her family archives as a form of activism and liberation, with some of her work exploring family history and racial identity.Other residents include Delali Ayivor, a Ghanaian-American writer; Mbali Dhlamini, a multidisciplinary artist, and Arinze Ifeakandu, a Nigerian writer who recently graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and writes about queer male intimacy. The residents will each spend several weeks at a time in the studio, with coronavirus restrictions in place, in staggered stages, beginning this month.Some might overlap with Wiley, who has spent much of the past year in Dakar, using the global pandemic as an opportunity to pause and paint, sometimes working with Black Rock residents who have helped him in his work.“I’m learning to view, discuss, and critique art that often depicts the Black body from a range of perspectives that span the globe,” Wiley said in an email exchange. “There’s an unending variety of rubrics through which artists are pushing the possibilities of representation.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More