In my practice, I have been very interested with the representations of the concept of ‘Flat time’ or the idea of an existence framed by “parallel timelines” experienced concurrently, an existence where all ancestral beings and all spirit entities co-exist concurrently in both their respective timelines as well as in ours.
This temporal concept can be found in a number of
African and Asian mythologies and religions, and is deeply ingrained into the story of diasporic african communities in the americas, throughout all of their cultural production.
I have used a variety of means to convey this aesthetically and conceptually, whether through visual layering and time shifting, with interactive storytelling and participatory media, multi framed and multi angled representations, or through serial artifact ideation –creating multiples of almost similar images or objects.
Insider/ Outsider to the African American Experience As a non American, I have been studying the historical, contemporary and contextual reality of the African American experience.
This I have done through:
- Qualitative observation –while living in multipleurban centers, working as artist in residence in african american community centers in Louisville KY (Smoketown), and in Chicago, (Street Level Youth Media).
- Traveling around the US and studying the history and socio economic conditions of the towns and places I visited, and currently living in a disadvantaged inner city neighborhood in north philadelphia with a majority of black residents
- Cultural cataloguing, of arts, media, stories, myths, food culture etc
- Multiple classes in different related cultural issues; for example “Race, Religion, Culture and Representation”; “African Diaspora in the US and Latin America” @ SAIC
- Studying representations in both US and international media and cultural artifacts, such as investigating the myths of real and created black anti heroes such as “Stagger Lee”, “Django”, “Rhygin”, “Robert Charles”, “Sweetback” ; their possible African antecedents and the connection to myths such as Brer Rabbit, Bouki the Hyena and other tricksters.
- Reading, listening to and learning from African Americans about the physical and psychic realities they inhabit, whether in classic works from writers such as Baldwin, Ellison, wright, Walker, Morrison, Hughes, Hurston, Angelou, Baraka, Cullen, McKay, Haley, Wilson, Cade, or contemporaries such as Whitehead, Beatty, hooks but also film makers, and musicians, and other cultural makers and starting with classics (Micheaux, Parks, Van Peebles, Riggs, and keeping up with contemporaries.
- Analyzing the assumptions that are oft projected on their black bodies –and by default onto my black body.
