Flipping the Racial Script: Blackface Performance as Resistance in Colombia Available to Purchase

Chapter 3, “Flipping the Racial Script: Blackface Performance as Resistance in Colombia,” examines the deployment of blackface in the multimedia exhibit Mambo negrita by the Afro-Colombian artist Liliana Angulo. Amid the turn towards multiculturalism and new celebrations of diversity in art, Angulo conjures the stereotype of the negrita to expose the endurance of racial scripts that define black women as either domestic servants or hypersexual objects of desire. By analyzing acts of spatial drag and spectacular opacity, the chapter shows how black artists use blackface to stage a political intervention, deconstruct racial stereotypes, and establish a black gaze in a scene of racial enjoyment.