“I was captivated by it. It convinced me of the power of limitless, passionate phantasy, of storytelling as a concept and of sadness in combination with liberating humor. It proved the artificiality of the difference between low art and high art and, yes, it showed that Darger has looked over his shoulder.”
The Los Angeles based artist Umar Rashid has a solo exhibition in the Dordrecht Museum in the Netherlands. From October 29 2022 until March 5 2023. A good reason to republish the interview I had with him in 2016.
“(humor) is indicative of my upbringing as a Black male in the United States (or anywhere in the Western psyche for that matter). Casting any light upon the White male hierarchy outside of the accepted canon requires superhuman (albeit tiring) cleverness, deftness, and diplomacy to which other groups are not so subjected. I don’t feel like this all the time but my black survival training always pushes this “behavior” into my frontal lobe. A shameful bi-product of living within the veil of unending racism. Yet, on a different note, I do consider myself to be quite funny.”
The Lamu Space Station is a nomadic and interactive initiative, centered in community artivism, from which different reflections and actions contribute to promote a more harmonious relationship with the environment. When we imagine local futures, we want to use local materials and local artisans. For instance, we worked with a Masai craftsman named Jackson to develop the Lamu goggles.
There is something delicate and unsettling about memorializing disasters like cyclones, landslides, hurricanes, etc., particularly when lives are lost. In a recent solo exhibition titled Homage to the Sailor, featured at the Afriart Gallery booth in the gallery HUB section of the 15th edition of FNB Art Joburg, Mozambican artist Nelsa Guambe presented figurative paintings on sails she rescued from the traumascape of Chicuque Village, her home area in the heart of Inhambane, as a way of paying homage to the sailors whose wares were ravaged by Cyclone Dineo.
Purnaa Deb’s work stands at the intersection of grace and redemption and looks at what is possible. She explores the liminal space between chaos and order.