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Saturday, July 15, 2017
Loretta Bennett
I. Lazy Gal, 2017 [quilted fabric; 82 x 84 inches]
II. Crown Royal, 2017 [quilted fabric; 70 x 67 inches]
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II. Crown Royal, 2017 [quilted fabric; 70 x 67 inches]
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Héctor Zamora
I. Ordem e Progresso, 2017, 30 pairs of gloves, Variable dimensions
II. Da séerie Ordem e Progresso, 2017, Inkjet print, 47.24 x 70.86 in
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II. Da séerie Ordem e Progresso, 2017, Inkjet print, 47.24 x 70.86 in
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Friday, July 14, 2017
'Pedestal', 2017 by Pope L.
[acrylic paint, drain, ELKAY drinking fountain #EFA201F, hardware, hole, photo timer, plastic pail, plastic sheeting, solenoid, tape, tubing + wood]
Saturday, July 8, 2017
Sajjad Hussain
[an Indian Hindu devotee worships the setting sun while celebrating Chhath Puja on the banks of the Yamuna river bank in New Delhi, India on November 6, 2016]
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BRANDON DREW HOLMES INTERVIEWED BY ASHER PENN [ARTICLE]
Brandon Drew Holmes is an artist whose critical practice directly addresses the pervasive culture of white supremacy in both the underground communities and the contemporary art world alike. Through his poetry, performance, curation, writing, and artworks, Holmes has developed a reputation as an uncompromising voice within a compromised situation, bringing a personal honesty and integrity and to a dialog that has historically been duplicitous by design.
Were you homeless because you were broke, or…
Where are you from?
The DMV.
DC, Maryland Virginia… What’s it like there?
It’s the east coast of North America. Kinda simultaneously suburban, urban, rural. Spent a lot of time at Six Flags, Borders, Barnes & Noble…
How did you get into art?
I’ve always been surrounded by art. My grandma was a poet. My moms tried studyin photography for a bit at the Corcoran, but had to drop out because she was a single-mother at the time. My step-granddad was very social within D.C.’s Black creative scenes.
So creativity was something your family valued.
In my family if a child was interested in dancin, then they were put into dance classes/competitions and they did that until we said we didn’t want to do it anymore. If you want to be a athlete, if you want to be a artist, it was all looked at the same; keepin us busy in hopes of keepin us outta trouble.
There are a lot of art museums in DC, right?
It’s the nation’s capital, so yea, I’d spend weekends with my grandma hittin the museums (the Hirshhorn was our turn up spot). Im really grateful to have had access to free museums, but also fam who took me. Livin in California has been a wild bummer because I see the diff between private and public.
Were you an arty teenager?
Constantly drawin, writin, and stuff. I attended a visual and performin arts program in Maryland. It was a wild situation because its like an “Art program”, but extremely poor and in the hood. I wasn’t a hipster arty kid. None of my peers were. We thought of ourselves as arty, but there wasn’t the social image that typically is associated with the label. That Rachel Leigh Cook from She’s All That “look”. Like we was just regular niggas who could draw.
What was your focus at art school?
Photography and fashion design.
Who were your favorite photographers?
David LaChapelle. The structurin of “high and low” and all that other bullshit is something that sat with me the most. I was constantly consumin some form of media, whether it be radio, or television, or magazines. I was obsessively takin in some aspect of the North American pop cultural machine. But I was really uninformed at the time and found LaChapelle’s gay white male gaze really allurin LOL. It was a well crafted excessive trash of a spectacle that my young obsessive ignorant mind ate up.
What was the art school that you ended up going to?
California College of the Arts. They dropped “Crafts” from their name the semester I enrolled for fashion design.
Getting rid of craft is a bad sign.
They sent me a letter sayin “We don’t want to be associated with Martha Stewart crafts shop.” It was aesthetic ignorance mixed with insecurity and desperation for capital- not even a desire to succeed but just to have authority. There was also an impendin presence of design, and design culture. In ’03 the notion of being a graphic designer had just had become mainstream. People didn’t realize that designers have a ridiculously high level of craft. But I didn’t care cause I had a scholarship.
Can you tell me a little bit more about your college experience? Was it a 4 year program?
It was, but I dropped out. CCA is a trash-ass school with horrible programmin, teachers, guidance/counselor staff… just completely corrupt and self-servin, as far as the fashion program was concerned. I transferred out to a commercial art school – the Academy of Art University.
How was the Academy of Art University?
At the time it was a cheesy, horrible, fraudulent place but it actually turned out to be a ridiculously amazin program that offered me access to designers like Alexander McQueenm Azzedine Alaia, Rodarte and Proenza Schouler. College was whatever. I’m not gonna say it wasn’t interestin, but that was such a minuscule insignificant moment for me, character buildin wise.
What were the other students like?
Majority of the kids there were a joke. White, of course. Privileged, while desperately tryna present themselves as something else. Doesn’t last for long, though. Who you are always comes out, especially with white kids.
What kind of fashion were you drawn to?
In high school I was obsessed with the Victoria’s Secret fashion show because they were just sellin capitalism and sex and I was a femme gay boy. Lots of music video stylin. So very MTV/TRL. I was consumin nonstop pop culture. In college I really lost interest in the spectacle and got obsessed with Balenciaga, and what Nicholas Ghesquière was doin at the time. Rigidness. Control became more intriguin than boastful excessiveness.
Did you keep making clothes after college?
Not really. I’d always been doin other things as well so it was easy to stop focusin on makin clothes and get more heavily back into writin and drawin. Designin a label is expensive and you need certain equipment, a studio, things like that. My motivation wasn’t there.
So what did you do instead?
Around 2007 I started volunteerin at art nonprofits in the Bay Area, internin at a gallery in San Francisco… a big chunk of my social life got focused on the “art scene”… It all just came about through a happenstance realization of “you’re always around so you might as well make this official” type thing. But it never was a official thing.
What was your impression of the scene?
It developed in layers. I’d meet people in the art industry that were really surprised I studied fashion because it wasn’t deemed art or relevant within the art industry/scene or they’d be taken aback that I liked a particular genre of music because I’m Black. There’s this thing where you could be at a hole in the wall space that’s not makin money and not interested in that (because of family wealth) but runnin itself like some blue chip gallery, or takin themselves just as seriously. Business and wealth are opaque in the Bay Area. Theres a lot of privilege there, so people treated everything with a friendly nonchalant air. But this was the white art scene.
Even though the art world is a business.
We say art world though it’s not a world. It’s an industry with varyin scenes just like any other industry. We don’t really say music world or fashion world. We say industry. We use art world to separate ourselves from what we’re doin. Aspects of money, class, and things like that can go unchecked, unscrutinized, unexplored because it’s a world. This is an industry and you make a shitload of money to literally do nothin but sell these useless ugly pieces of shit.
Were you making art around this time?
When I got involved with galleries/volunteer work I actually stopped makin art. I was workin at a pizza place and would go to galleries before my shifts and on days off. Eventually I started curatin exhibits which led to gettin interested in this idea of the exhibit as an artwork. I was just workin with other artists to make their ideas happen as my creative work.
Can you tell me about the shows you were curating?
Can you tell me about the shows you were curating?
Typically structured around something that had something to do with me personally LOL. The first exhibit I curated was structured around a specific point in my life- I had been stayin in a small room in my best friend’s house, all of my personal stuff was stored in her basement because the room wasn’t large enough to hold anything. The plan was to stay two, three months to save up money to go get a better place or possibly leave the Bay Area. That stretched out into me bein there for a year and not accumulatin anything because it couldn’t fit into the room.
So your stuff was getting dust on it.
Yea. The install was a mixture of my personal items- lamps, desk, tables, shit like that, which I hadn’t used in a year- and artwork that I couldn’t afford to buy. It was installed in this way that was intriguin but frustratin at the same time because it didn’t delineate what was and wasn’t an “artwork”.
That’s cool.
Another exhibit/piece was this thing called the Beautiful Kiosk, which was talkin bout how a gallery is a store, art is for sale. It just doesn’t get sold and interacted with the way a sweater, book or a lamp might, because its highly priced alongside its social and class structures. Art is a commodity but it actually has to socially function in some way so the person can decide if they want to buy and invest in it. At that moment in my life I was homeless, so I was really truly beginnin to think about commodities and space and consumption.
You were pointing to the actual function of the show itself.
When you look at a paintin, film, a photograph, or when you experience music or readin, theres a function there, but we don’t actually talk about the function of contemporary art. We don’t discuss these things and our individual interaction. Most artists, collectors and scensters don’t actually deal with the realities of art’s various functions in their life. There are a lot of people who buy art because it makes them relevant. People make art because they hope it’s gonna make them relevant. We don’t talk about these things. I was thinkin about this a lot because I was once again restructurin my life.
How were the shows received?
People are over that conversation now, but at that time, some were goin headstrong with the artistically active curator, but still havin difficulty talkin about it. There’s the original definition of a curator as a selector and someone who cares and nurtures shit, but ultimately, it’s people operatin on the industry level of, “You’re hot. I like your stuff. This could sell. We can make money. This is how this space is gonna continue to run” type of stuff. Though people were hesitant to accept the idea a curator can be an artist within history.
Was this why you transitioned into writing?
I got to this point where I could start doin these things myself. It made more sense to just go about it that way as opposed to approachin artists and bein stressed out jumpin around San Francisco and Oakland, tryin to acquire money for them. So I moved into that and became known as a writer amongst my peers.
Was it a thing where everyone wanted you to write anyways?
I’ve always been an outspoken person. That was a part of my bio as a joke for a long time. Certain people in San Francisco referred to me as a “man of bold statements”. People would approach me for social commentary on things. It was just entertainin fodder for them. I’m a reserved person but very opinionated and have no problem expressin my opinion if need be. I’m not one to put statements out into the world unless I feel like it’s needed, which is also how I kind of came to a point in my life where I needed to discuss white supremacy.
Was it something you hadn’t been talking about before?
Pretty much. That’s an aspect of white supremacy. We’re put into a way of complacency that isn’t complete silence, but just quiet chatter. We know it, and we see it, we feel these things, but we’re fed through media to not fully want to believe in white supremacy. To think that its not significant or saturated as it actually is. I know and believe myself to be a charismatic person, an endearin and nice person, but at the other end of that, I also know the reality of how white people interact with me. There is a history of how white people interact with Black people and how white people are entertained by people of Color, specifically Black people.
Which was confirmed by your experiences.
I know now for sure there were tons of people that were fetishizin me. Tons of people who were lookin at me as some minstrel construct or me bein foreign and interestin to them. When I was younger in San Francisco doin art stuff, I definitely was not conscious enough to see that’s what was happenin, but that’s what it was. I’ve experienced tons of people who make statements to me about how they’ve never met a Black person who knows the things that I know or talks the way that I talk.
That’s gotta be disappointing.
I’ve grown up sporadically bein dropped in white spaces, and in general I began navigatin fetishism and people placin their views of me onto me at a young age. I was six feet tall by the time I was ten years old, so I’ve grown up with that sense of disappointment in people. I was taught by my mother to never really put hope into white society (specifically in the first grade when she pulled me out of an elementary school overseen by a racist principle). But yeah, that disappointment. I wasn’t present with myself enough to feel anything beyond. The first gallery that I worked at, I started workin there from doin an unpaid internship, and I know genuinely both of those curators liked me. That they were attracted to me. They liked me as a person, but I also know within the reality of white supremacy, there’s aspects of our relationship they’ll never be able to comprehend. There’s an actual part of them, as white people, that they’re never gonna be aware of or truthful with themselves on why they were attracted to me.
Which in many ways has nothing to do with who you actually are.
I know I’m actually a chill, fuckin awesome person, but there’s also the reality that I know for a fact white people have used my presence at their gallery to get grants and opportunities with other institutes. It’s sold as, “We are a diverse gallery. We care about community. One of our interns is “black” and he actually lives in the neighborhood” and stuff like that.
How did you start making your text drawings?
I didn’t know how to start writin about a lot of issues and stuff and discussin race, and so basically I would start drawin out the text. I just wasn’t interested in writin essays myself, so those drawin’s were to release that. It was a moment in my life with people thinkin that they understood who I was, seein themselves as a “good” white person. Those drawings were very much me basically just readin the world.
Are you still making them?
My mind is a whole lot more clear than it was and I think about things differently. The way I make them now is very different. At that time I was socializin with a group of people who I thought were makin personal artwork to explore themselves and to register what was goin on in the world on a real level. Now I see all that as just white bullshit. An aspect of makin those drawings was me basically callin bullshit on a lot of my peers’ art practices and them as white people. I do that with my actual voice now, as well as my work.
Despite that, or maybe because of it, they’re “successful” works.
Well, I knew these drawin’s were going to be well received. Because they are bein sincerely and genuinely made, which a lot of artwork isn’t. And I produce work for myself. There was a bit of desired approval there which is where art makin goes wrong, but their conception had more to do with figurin out my life than figurin out how to be relevant on the scene/industry.
You mentioned earlier that you’ve been homeless before.
I’ve been homeless sporadically since livin in California. It’s a really privileged take on bein homeless, for sure. I was sleepin in parks, checkin on shelters, sneakin into buildin’s for shelter, but I was also still organizin independent exhibits LOL. I was just going with the flow.
Were you homeless because you were broke, or…
Just not bein able to get hired and people refusin to rent to me. When I moved to The Bay in ’03, it was structured in this way that within a week, you could find a minimum-wage job, dependin on what your capabilities and stuff were. Within a month, you’d be able to find spots to live that was within your budget, and slowly over time, because of gentrification and capitalization, that changed. Every time that I’ve been homeless it’s not because I can’t find a job, but because people won’t hire me. For me, I know it’s built around the white gaze. They’re goin to hire this white person over me or they’re goin to hire this other Black person/POC who they see as (physically) less threatenin/more acceptin. No matter the race of the employees, their goin to hire someone they feel more confident in bein able to dominate.
Do you see yourself having developed different survival skills?
I was always an outsider when I lived in the Bay Area, so there was a part of me that was socially structured to just navigate and keep rollin’. The first time I was homeless, that actually helped me get to a point in seein peoples truths. I thought I was grown LOL, but I learned that I couldn’t depend on people because we will make this statement, “Well, call me if you need anything,” but when you call, we don’t answer.
Last question: you brought up white supremacy a number of times and how it relates to the art industry. My personal perspective is the culture of art is more often a symptom of the way that people are behaving, and thinking. This kind of goes against the notion that Artists could lead the way. Do you think art can save people from something like white supremacy?
Three years ago, I would definitely have said “yeah, we have the capability” because we have decided to be artists, as a group of people with varyin privilege and fortune. Today I no longer see it as a “we”. White supremacy has affected so many aspects of life and culture and people of Color need to step away from a lot of this shit and focus on our own communities. Art is life and Life is art and white people have rerouted that. Colonization has taught us to approach creatin in particular confines and narratives. Because of that, I don’t see it for white artists being able to save anyone from themselves. I mean look at any protest surroundin gentrification that has white art people thinkin y’all aren’t supremacists or directly involved in it’s existence. Black people, and people of Color in general, are faced with survivin. We are born into social situations where we are met unconsciously with two options: fightin for our proper existence with a sense of hope or move forward attemptin a consistent level of comfortability. Both are attempts to survive and distance ourselves from the violence of white people, which is pervasive. White people have created a situation where Black people either be artists for them or activists against them which is a deceptive ploy and a constant fail. The activism of Black people is our art and our art is a part of our activism.
FEMME BLACK SCI-FI AND UNAPOLOGETIC SOFTNESS [ARTICLE]
Word by Layla Ben-Ali
II. “Worked,” 2016, RAFiA.
III. “Coffee Complex (AKA Dark Roasted,No Creme)” 2017, Liz Mputu.
The political subversion used by three interlocutors with socio-political poise and life experience serve as platforms to approach abjection in the face of imperialism as well as cultural healing in the knowledge of one’s past and idealized future.
These artists carve a queer space to nuance what it means to be black and radical. The revolution does not always take form in grounded black nationalist politics. However, it will always be partnered with the politics of desire or more specifically what scholar and activist L.H. Stallings calls “sexual decolonization.” This form of decolonization, famously termed “decoloniality” by scholar Walter Mignolo, is a system of knowledge intent on reforming the pedagogical dominance of the Western matrix of power.
MHYSA RAFiA, and Liz Mputu function avidly within this space. Through this, they employ a sort of “hierarchy inversion,” indicating political subversiveness found in Afrodiasporic expressive culture. Cooper contends that this expressive culture has always been deemed categorically by hegemonic social institutions “vulgar,” therefore hierarchy inversion is the idea of transmitting the negative conceptualization of vulgarity into positive conceptualization. It is the subversion of turning vulgarity in the face of a contentious white gaze on its head. The beauty of black feminism ensues that gender boundaries are questioned, disrupted, and reformed in organic manners. This avowal has much to do with the politics of subversion, a resistance politics that specifically inverts images of stereotypes into ones of empowerment.
Just as another episode of self-criticism, rotting introversion, and frustration from folks misunderstanding black women reprogrammed within me the other day, some words I’ve seen time and time again from an angel on social media calcified: “be tender with yourself.” Those are the words of MHYSA, a deity of gentleness, hardcore sounds, black queer visibility agendas, and one-half of SCRAAATCH.
The social media footprints of artists like MHYSA, RAFiA, and Liz Mputu are ever resilient and unmoved. Through MHYSA’s, RAFiA’s, and Liz’s book/instagram presences and music platforms, the urgency to demonstrate cultural continuity, to employ uncensored philosophy and artistic expression, and to inform others about the prospective plight of the black community take shape under decolonial parameters of political subversion and self-making biomythography. The social media call-outs of microaggressions, misogyny, misogynoir, queer invisibility, and unwarranted heteronormative gaze are what make the pot liquor of their black femme “reads” of racist bs even sweeter. MHYSA, RAFiA, and Liz Mputu are each “shapers” (to borrow Octavia Butler’s term) of their futures and the future of black women and femmes.
MHYSA’s sonic assemblages often feature 90s black women realness, and Hip-Hop by women who illustrated that decade with boldness, cute fashion savvy, and gospel-blues melismatic flawlessness.
Most recently, MHYSA decks their song “Strobe” (produced by lawd knows of SCRAAATCH) with flash photography sound effects, minor chord synth harmonies, and synth claps in place of hi-hat rhythmic sections. “So many pics it’s like I got my own strobe light/that flash from the back got my ass lookin so right/so many pics it’s like i got my own strobe light/click click click click click.” The word “carefree” might describe this display of brilliant resistance politics, but even more poignant is the subversion of gaze: a declaration of Afro-diasporic beauty that demonstrates institutional play a term they used in a recent talk at American Medium (the gallery where the artist recently presented the solo exhibition Lavendra under the name E. Jane). Their work “THOT FANTASY V” features reassembling of songs by WOC like Cardi B, Tamar Braxton, and The Pussycat Dolls, drenched in motifs of dualism through the fearless choice of sampled artists, sirens, dark rhythmic drones, and glass breaking, beckoning narratives of both urgency and refusal. I’ve taken their phrase “be tender with yourself” to heart and spirit on numerous occasions, especially knowing that just as I do, MHYSA often deals with both daily microaggressions of being a black femme in an exclusionary Earth.
Also, a promulgator of an intimately caring social media “call-out” elegance that makes visible the contentions against POC, black women, and black people overall is ever-majestic RAFiA. Like MHYSA, she also works in various media and is the sole shaper of her own music production.
RAFiA’s most recent memento entitled MARCH 19TH begins with an enterprising presence by way of her name repeating in the rhythmic section of “ENGiNE,” followed by animated synths with modulator LFO cycle passes, and the killer first line “Oh oh oh/I’m tired of this white shit” in a beautifully effeminate alto as well as a sometimes tenor vocal range with rich vibrato. MARCH 19TH also features the desirous jungle capricious sounds of “Killin It Sells,” the cyborg-like electronic transmissions and transparent desiring yet conditional-ultimatum lyrics of “No Fucking Clue,” the upbeat interrogation of gentrification in “No Windows,” the resolute Brooklyn-made manifesto “4GETME,” and the call-out of racism, microaggressions, and gaze endeavors in “CALL.” RAFiA summons blackness and creativity in an unapologetic manifestation, revealing the ostracisms of white supremacy while encouraging communal empowerment and self-healing.
The Internet presence of Liz Mputu, affably represented by Bete Noire 3 on Soundcloud, also assumes an experience of healing with an addendum of indulgent interiority and radical black femme transparency. Often, Liz’s commentary of technoculture is both figuratively and literally wrapped around their body in the images they display.
Liz’s sound art, a loving and honest affirmation of what it means to be human, complicated, and beautiful in those complications is an arrangement of poetry, reflections, self-produced music, fast-cadenced witty rap, and warped samples. Liz’s commentary memento PRESSED BUT COPING CREATIVELY accents background television sounds of the news, a quiet narration feature that one could allude to what scholar and artist Kodwo Eshun calls “futures industry” or “forecasts,” a dystopic commentary of economic distress, global warfare, and other catastrophic events often dejecting the livelihoods of POC. Liz’s Soundcloud also envelops “Whoswatching,” a track that underscores Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” alongside eerie cinematic sound motifs; the spoken word piece “things I wanted 2 text redeem but worked over perfectly in my head instead as preparation 2 being Ur man Or something:” which complicates the spectrums of black pride and queer veiling (“I wonder the line between pro-black wokeness and I’m gonna exorcise the faggot out/Is there room for us my love?”); and “CyberSerenity X So Much More [Healz 4 U],” a cosmic and android-voiced mantra of spiritual alleviation.
Liz, RAFiA, and MHYSA do not just promulgate the future of black women and femmes but expound on a rich and accessible past as well. It is to say that if one were to reach far enough into their past, they would see that they come from technologically-agential people already. Femme Black Sci-Fi, as I like to qualify their work, is a way of encompassing ancient sciences, the way that black women and femmes, amongst black people generally and globally, have informed those sciences and even defied populist sciences. Femme Black Sci-Fi relies just as much on creating futures as it does on the trope of dystopianism. Whether through the speculative-fiction themes of disorder or through grounded theories of pessimism and plight, it considers postcolonial conditions as nuisance to intersectional black progress. Femme Black Sci-Fi reveals the antics of colonial technology as much as it hones the promulgation of technological savvy. I channel these thinkers to qualify what we mean by humanism, nature, nurture, spirituality, tradition, and desire. Through many sci-fi renderings of modernity, it is to be gleaned that colonial technology has had the ability to erase markers of cultural identity which include agricultural customs, supernatural belief systems and subsystems, performances of sensuality and sexuality, and sartorial culture. It is to say, therefore, that all of the preceding aspects of diasporic cultural memory, including the desire for African-derived spirituality, is an essential part of feminism and humanism when Africanness is at risk of erasure. Liz, RAFiA, and MHYSA are avid commentators of this.
Femme Black Sci-Fi also implies a way to talk about science on black terms. Traditionally, the difference between sci-fi and fantasy is that science fiction is a fictitious story of something that is completely possible due to scientific innovation/possibilities but perhaps has not happened or been proven yet. Because one can speculate how this science might be used in a situation not yet documented but possible through the combination of knowledge and imagination, stories of scientific and technological past become science fiction: it is a fiction based on real science. Therefore, many of the stories that are conceived of by black people globally whether it be of natural science, technological science, or spiritual science is still conceivable. It is a way to discuss science on decolonial terms. Spiritual science, just like natural and technological science, is worthy of nuanced and rational renderings.
Amongst the much-warranted reads against hegemonic pressures, there is an equally warranted allegorical “softness” amongst these three artists. In Rafia’s sartorial aesthetic you’ll find hot pink hair and visible allusions to Baby Bop; as you’ll find MHYSA explain on social media that being soft and/or tender is the key to survival and their art in various hues of lavender; as in Liz you’ll find body transparency and interiority is the key to self-sovereignty. Black women and femmes are not a monolith; we are not to be painted with a thin brushstroke of stereotypes. Said interlocutors are inherently the possessors of the paintbrush and the brushstroke is inclusive in all of its subject’s nuances. The face of black femininity, black feminism, and black queerness is not limited: it is broad, yet definite and productively defiant.
There is intentionality in resistance; resistance does not always take the shape of proclaiming one’s individuality in the face of cultural proclamations. Instead, individual resistance can appear as honing collective archetypal information of one’s ancestral past and present, even if that ancestral information takes place in the hoods of Black America, in order to create an ideal future of what resistance might look like in the face of hegemony. I like to call this refusal of hegemonic devices the “Profane Holy,” looking at the “Holy Profane” oppositely and finding spiritually grounded refuge in eroticism and beautifully warranted profanity. It is code for the urgency of cultural sovereignty, cultural continuity, and cultural survival. It is the urge to be recognized for achievement and simultaneously the leisure to be eccentric with or without deep politicization. It is in disidentification that a narrativizing of the history of oppression, black plight, and an interrogation of social institutions allows counterhegemony to prevail.
It demonstrates that right beside a narrative of anxiety stands a community of oppressed and simultaneously resilient people that seek to re-establish the culture of a powerful oral tradition through counterhegemonic faculties. In this wonderful oral tradition, I find healing through MHYSA, RAFiA, and Liz. When experiencing them through their artful Internet presence, my pain of introversion, self-criticism, and the misunderstood gaze of my black queer identity becomes a bearable conversation.
I. MHYSA is one-half of SCRAAATCH; photo courtesy of Naima Green.II. “Worked,” 2016, RAFiA.
III. “Coffee Complex (AKA Dark Roasted,No Creme)” 2017, Liz Mputu.
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