Via Phenderson Djèlí Clark  (a fellow Caribbean afrofuturist)

“Our personal history is often rooted in the identity of our families and what the writers of history, often the usurpers, choose to depict as historical fact. I try to reveal the distinct possibilities of these often conflicting allegories with imagery depicting the contradictions in historical fact, the omissions in historical academia, and the narrative of the imagination of the hope of ones place in history.”–artist S. Ross Browne

Painting- “The Huntress” 2010, by S. Ross Browne

I’m always on the lookout for art of the speculative that subverts history and our expectations. Enter artist S. Ross Browne’s exhibit Self Evident Truths. In this 2012 exhibit, mostly women of African descent are portrayed. Each is dressed in early or late medieval European armor or royal dress, in poses that mimic popular Western art of the time. Each however manages to hold onto a distinctly non-European identity–rooted in their elaborate and richly decorated locs, a part of the modern African Diaspora now familiar throughout the Black Atlantic with its own royal/regal history that links to an unknown but celebrated African past. In several of the images, the women wear clothing tinged with symbols of death–ghostly skulls, and what looks like the embroidery from the hull of a slave ship.

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