Art of This World: Janel Jefferson

Artist Janel Jefferson talks about her use of photographs from the 19th and 20th century to create colorful and haunting painted portraits that give life to the past and show that records are like gifts from the past to the present and future. The video is from the Juneteenth Jamboree site on Kiru. Listen to […]

Moving On the Wires: Alien Bodies’ Logo Contest

Via Alien Bodies: The 2013 Emory Alien Bodies: Race, Space, Sex and the African Diaspora Conference is pleased to announce a Logo Contest! The conference explores such questions as: how do we begin to understand the ways in which race, space, and sex configure “the alien” within spaces allegedly “beyond” markers of difference? In doing […]

Moving on the Wires: Black to the Future Series

Tempestt Hazel, curator of The Future’s Past exhibition and executive director of the Chicago Arts Archive: A Sixty Inches From Center Project is doing a series on Afrofuturism and Afrosurrealism. Two of her first interviewees were visual artist Krista Franklin and Afrosurrealist creator D. Scott Miller. This is the beginning of Franklin’s interview: What is […]

Art of This World: Leo and Diane Dillon

A few weeks ago, Leo Dillon of the illustration husband-and-wife team Leo and Diane Dillon passed away. The duo won several awards over the years and created many wonderful illustrations for books, including books involving different cultures, stories and people of the African diaspora. Read his New York Times obituary and take a look at […]

…An Album By Its Cover: The Roots’ Rising Down

Via Lostinurbanism and Karnado Fear of Negro rule was still evident in 1900. Rising Down, the eighth studio album of The Roots was released on April 29, 2008. Above is the original drawing used the for the cover, “The Vampire that Hovers Over North Carolina,” a cartoon by Norman E. Jennette, which was published in […]

Cosmic Ghost at the Museum…

Tuesday was my last day of classes, so yesterday I decided to treat myself to a few of exhibitions. First, I went to the American Museum of Natural History to see “Beyond Planet Earth: the Future of Space Exploration.” Upon entering, we saw my favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, speaking in a video about the […]

Otherworldly Videos: Afropunk Presents….

Wangechi Mutu Sanford Biggers Barron Clairborne On MAY 24th at BROOKLYN MUSEUM, Afro-punk pictures presents “The Triptych,” in association with Weeksville Heritage Center. This short-film series (Dir. Terence Nance, Dir. of Photography Shawn Peters, Co-Dir. Barron Claiborne) highlights the work of artists Sanford Biggers, Wangechi Mutu, and Barron Claiborne. Live music and a Q&A with […]

Art of This World: Robert Pruitt

Artist Robert Pruitt will be releasing a comic, “Towards A Walk In the Sun,” at the Studio Museum of Harlem in July. As an artist, he is greatly influenced by Romare Bearden and recently premiered his work “Conjuring Woman” in “The Bearden Project.” “Conjuring Woman” and his other work are interesting in how he shows […]

Art of This World: Wandering…

I came across the other day a Liberator Magazine interview of photographer Sedrick Miles about his work, “Wanderlust.” I thought it was interesting, since wanderlust was on my mind. Also, he mentions Afrofuturism: “Liberatormag: When I was a young, I was fascinated with time travel and flying. In particular, Virginia Hamilton’s “The People Could Fly” […]

Modern Griots: John Jennings

John Jennings, who describes himself as a “a professional bender of time,” and is an associate professor in visual studies at University at Buffalo, blends together the worlds of comics, hip-hop and racial discourse. Here is some of his article from Buffalo’s website: John Jennings centers his life on provocative questions: How can we show the […]