Black lives have always mattered through colonialism, the Atlantic Slave Trade, the Jim Crow era, apartheid, and currently, with the ongoing abuse of Black bodies by the police. The atrocity committed against People of Color around the world clearly indicates that social engineering against us has birthed all the negative repression.
Nxumalo’s exhibition was an exercise in how the black male body seeks to find a form of redemption in a culture that is gluttonous with representation and its capability to take voice and power from its subject.
Photography has always been of great importance, from the first postcards produced in colonial times that were major tools for racial propaganda to the proliferation of local studio photographers like Seydou Keita in Mali and Mama Casset in Senegal that gave early-twentieth-century Africans the opportunity to choose how they were represented
Being able to express oneself without words is a powerful tool in making wellbeing accessible for those without the confidence to voice how they feel. Experiencing emotions vicariously through other’s work, whether they are your own emotions reflected or new ways to empathise with others, is a priceless gift. And in the economics of health, art is a valuable currency which has an international value.
I come from a country, Ethiopia, that was never colonized. I want to pass on my love and respect to my companions who went to war against colonization and defeated Italy. Today I am proud of these people and being Ethiopian, but I have never forgotten that I am also African. And the rest of Africa was colonized. People in the colonized countries lost their original name, tradition, culture, language and religion. All this has been changed by Western cultures.