... of these developments and reckon with the implications and meanings of these changes in conditions for those suffering their consequences. Often central to and reflected in the artist’s work is a critique of narratives of progress. This article examines the ways The Notion of Family series bears witness to Black life...

...Omar Kholeif Dr Omar Kholeif maps out the life and practice of the path-breaking British-artist, Lubaina Himid RA CBE (born, Zanzibar 1954) through a considered engagement of her multivalent creative output—in visual art, writing, and exhibition-making. A leading figure in the British Black Arts...

.... Through the Ebony Fashion Fair, Johnson Publishing Company brought exclusive design into very public spaces and featured it on black bodies. The traveling show reiterated the publishing company’s project of featuring the best in black life, and it used fashion, beauty, and glamour to accomplish that end...

...- It would take decades for Hall to find, indeed ing. Hall’s acknowledgment of Miles Davis is also a to help construct and consolidate, such a commu- recognition of how one mode of being, being black, nity for himself, for those already there regardless calls to and makes life possible, under sometimes...

...Michele Wallace In an article written by her daughter Michele Wallace, Faith Ringgold’s Black Light series is presented as part of an experiment in the 1960s quest for the creation of a “black aesthetics” best understood in relation to Ringgold’s life and the evolution of her oeuvre. Black...

... on Princess Elizabeth, the magazine blackness. Life photographer Yale Joel captured was clear to note that she grew up in the lavish Princess Elizabeth in her Upper East Side apart- Royal Palace, where servants attended to her every ment in New York City hoping to portray the need. Drum editors, perhaps...

... solely of painterly brush- emphasizes, as he envisions the sale of his assem- strokes, Donkor explains that UK Diaspora comes blage as replicating the loss and suffering experi- to life from a variety of “materials” that “include enced by black bodies during slavery.16 Defying...

... and the African diaspora, thus possessing an archive of images of late twentieth-century African American life, especially African American spiritual culture. Her work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Library...

... life as a young black man. This article considers illness, art, and activism while reflecting on the effects of living with sickle cell disease and the continued invisibility around this illness, both on the African continent and beyond for the very reasons Rodney’s works highlight. In focusing...

...Amy Ongiri In Death 24x a Second Laura Mulvey argues that cinematic images belie the deathlike qualities of still photography because of their ability to invoke the appearance of life through motion. This essay examines film and video projects that use found footage and still images from the Black...

...James Smalls This article constitutes part of my continuously evolving fascination and research into the life, legacy, and visual significance of Féral Benga (1906–57). It foregrounds, in particular, the critical discourses surrounding (Afro)modernism generated by his presence in, and influence...

...). The new reading respects, but diverges from, previous interpretations that have typically focused on representations of black domestic life and the politics of identity. Taking direction from several interviews with the artist, including one conducted by the author in 2015, the article uses a formal...

... and redefine the “self,” the one, has been an ongoing unbroken enterprise for Black Chicago. Chicago was, in the 1960s, paradigmatic of life in the African Diaspora...

... Visual Arts grant forced her unwavering commitment to Africa, her from Howard University. Works like Congo Dance art, and her heritage. Jones dedicated her life to rais- Mask (1972) and Guli Mask (1972) reference specific ing the visibility of black artists in America, Africa, ceremonial masks...

..., formal portraits of self-styled young black men set against bright, patterned backdrops. Some, however, have been skeptical of not only the accessibility and somewhat pedagogical subject matter vis-à-vis the contemporary black male in life and representation, but also his retro photorealist technique...

...Hisham Aidi Hisham Aidi traces how Malcolm X—and the black freedom movement, more broadly— have become central to Muslim youth consciousness today. He traces how today, as during the early 1960s, various governments—the United States, Britain, Iran, and Saudia Arabia—have been trying...

..., climactic in poignant, politically charged lithographs in a realist drawing style set in increasingly abstract environments. By then associated with the Black Arts Movement, he continued to recycle historical figures and references from his earliest work in the milieu of a Black Renaissance in Chicago...

...Naminata Diabate Cultural products and discourses about erotic pleasure have recently proliferated, leading to what the author calls “the pleasure turn.” In studies of African culture, “the pleasure turn” can be read as decentering the dominant paradigm that has mostly associated black nakedness...

... of extraordinary incidents in the life of the photograph and its reception. These incidents reveal how photographic representations of expressive black culture and people are often received and interpreted by viewers across the lines of race and class in problematic ways. The essay also connects the reception...

... discourses, Fred Holland’s sculptures are reflections on life’s impermanence, on human frailty, and on the struggle for survival. He walks the line between the categories that have defined black art in a constant search for reinvention and renewal. Copyright © 2010 Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art...