Over the din of hungover brunching and playful chatter he and I added our own version of speak–his musings spiced with a velvety lisp, my ramblings staccato-like, punctuated at the start of a new thought which began at the end of an unfinished one. After a few minutes we ping ponged memories from our childhood…
“To All These Garlands”, Toyin Odutola. Courtesy of artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. “People are so quick, especially now in the age of the selfie, to put up a pose and assert this idea of what they think they should be,” artist Toyin Odutola tells me of photographing her subjects. “I hold the…
Robert Pruitt, “Untitled 3” The artistic cultural production and cultural theory that is Afrofuturism has long used the fantastical and Science Fiction elements of robotics and aliens, to solve the inequality of colonialism by transcending the social limitations of Black Diasporic life in Western society. Although appearing cosmically perfect, it cannot be denied that Afrofuturism’s history is far…
Photo by Fox Searchlight With his third feature, “12 Years a Slave”, director Steve McQueen proved yet again that his brand of cruel cinema is nothing to mess with. What made the epic slave narrative uniquely horrifying wasn’t its unflinching portrayal of the brutal horrors of slavery (as a McQueen fan I felt the artist-turned-director…
Photo by Stevie Mada Ah, baby hair: as diaphanous as a vapor, as nimble as a wisp, they are the all but forgotten fine edges that line our scalps. The remnants of a childhood wave pattern that coiled and coalesced, these wiry tendrils are hardly ample in size, but their cultural significance undoubtedly looms large.…
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“Folk music is heritage. If you lose it, you lose your soul.” – O.S. with ‘The National’ A laborer, turned wedding singer, turned indie sensation, Omar Souleyman is not about to lose his as he scales the worlds grandest stages personifying the soul of Middle Eastern folk-pop. But this wasn’t one of those life-long childhood…
Photo by Sadia Bruce Artist Shantell Martin has the kind of gentle, present countenance reserved only for the truly self-assured. I announce my arrival at her Tribeca studio with a knock and she pulls open the mint green metal door– on which she has scrawled her name in tiny letters, all caps– with a knowing smile, inviting…
