From my own personal experience, growing up, I did feel different and often out of place as a working class artistic mixed-race boy who wasn’t into football for example. Back then, I guess I wasn’t seen as traditionally masculine but I also didn’t want to ever show vulnerability in front of others either.
A writer clears his path through incessant questioning—seeking more than anything else an honest evaluation of his position and place in the subject’s affairs. Devoid of any irrelevancy and unpretentiousness, a piece of writing will consequently function as honest, and as intimate. Hence there is a sense in which “intimacy” means “clarity.”
The African American artist Terry Adkins died in 2014. At 60. He was hardly known outside of the USA. Even at home his work did not get the attention it deserved. At the moment – until June 11 – Paula Cooper Gallery in New York presents work of Adkins. Finally. A good reason to re-publish the article Rob Perrée wrote about his work in 2018.
“………for the 59th edition of the event, Uganda made its first appearance. For a country that has been accused of having no art, this was an unprecedented. And for a country where the National Theatre was put up for sale by the unscrupulous of its putrescent government in favor of an investor erecting a shopping mall!
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to separate oneself from one’s roots. Ethiopia is a part of me as much as my Black identity is in the United States. My work is heavily focused on my identity to where I’ve grown up and where I currently live. I have hopes that my African background will, perhaps one day, lead to conversations about global Blackness. Being Black in other parts of the world isn’t the same as it is in North America – the struggles and challenges differ from place to place.