Race, gender and art have been complex topics to pursue but artists like Walker find this a vital opportunity to express their message, celebrate black masculinity and protest the lack of “accurate representation of black males in media…”
Archive: articles
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Much like the work of authors, these are character studies of timeless protagonists who never existed but can have as much impact on audiences as literary heroes. Interestingly Yaidom-Boakye is also a writer, so she understands how to structure a story. Her pictures are a narrative without words.
Christabel Johanson on the British-Ghanaian artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Vigil For A Horseman (detail), 2017
First published: May 6, 2020
Strong Women: Zanele Muholi
By playing photographer and subject, Muholi keeps the authenticity of both roles and redefines the transaction between those roles. It is true to say that she is both (and neither) the dominant and submissive party. This is the traditional power dynamic examined through the styles she uses.
Christabel Johanson on Zanele Muholi
Somnyama Ngonyama II, Oslo, 2015 © Zanele Muholi. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York.
First published: June 6, 2021
Black Women’s Bodies in Art
Through their art work, these women confront the injustices of misrepresentation done to black women throughout history and disrupt the built-in prejudices they have faced. Importantly they also prove that the importance of black female’s bodies run more than just skin deep.
Christabel Johanson on Black Women’s Bodies in Art.
First published: September 3, 2019
Pencil Me Down: groupshow at Angels and Muse, Ikoyi, Lagos.
In Pencil Me Down, drawing again shows itself as capable of holding the textures of life and the complexity and variety of human emotions as any other medium.