Dissertation (DPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

"Our search for understanding in matters of race automatically incline us toward blackness, although that is not where these answers lie." – Nell Irvin Painter. Over the course of, and in partial fulfillment for, the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art and the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film Production, I have produced a multimedia body of work. I made this body of work as a reflection and result of my processes and studies, and as a method to examine perception, and representation in relation to identity. This body of work combines drawing, painting, printmaking, ceramics, and filmmaking; utilizing each medium to scrutinize language, particularly that of the terms "black" and "white" and their cultural relationships to each other. Through this practice, my work evolved into a study of expectation, as situated through language, and conventional understanding. This work adds to the discourse on spaces and expectations of marginalized communities, art, and continues the tradition of the artists' practice as a form of research. I also position this work in relation to current mass culture iconography while using a distancing effect to explore concepts of martyrdom and minstrelsy as reflections of expectations on my own experience.

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The purpose of my Thesis is to further develop an artistic practice that involves a thoughtful, drawn out engagement with culture, utilizing immediacy, temporality and improvisation through the formal manipulation of different mediums. My research focuses on these ideas as a continual thread that runs through my work of the past twenty years and gives conceptual unity to the range of stylistic experiments that have come with my growth as an artist. The end result is collage, painting, video and installation that utilizes both the literal and parabolical tearing, cutting and pasting of elements together as analogies within a defined field. The defined field being both the formal area of the work, as well as the conceptual representation of my individual consciousness as expressed through my process. Moving between abstraction and representation allows me to sample my thoughts and present them through a methodology that is consistent with the cognitive interplay of abstract and representative thought.

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Br(others) Only conceptualizes the wall sculptures of Rashid Johnson as free-standing “altars” that play with different and sometimes divergent brands of black masculinity and classed homosociality. Primarily, I analyze three of Johnson’s sculptures from the late 2000s: I Who Have Nothing (2008); I’m Still in Love with You (2008); and Souls of Black Folk (2010). I argue that, by invoking the history of black renaissance men, gentlemen scholars, and entertainers, Johnson’s work plays with various kinds of black masculinity and homosociality that simultaneously straddle the past and future. By doing so, his art not only enacts a racialized temporality, but it also chips away at monolithic notions of black masculinity by fabricating contradictory amalgams of race, class, and gender. For my analysis of Johnson’s artworks, I utilize Cassandra Jackson’s Violence, Visual Culture, and the Black Male Body (2010) as the chief framework for conceptualizing the waxy coats of Johnson’s sculptures as wounded bodies in an effort to “flesh out” the vulnerability of black men. Theorizing the putrescent surfaces of Johnson’s sculptures as violable bodies allows me to consider the ruptures between seemingly impenetrable black masculinity and the always-present vulnerability of the black male body to violence. / text

Essa dissertação versa sobre a noção de arte afro-brasileira, tomando os principais estudos voltados à questão, exposições emblemáticas ao redor do tema e os contextos de fundação e expografia de duas instituições decisivas da área o Museu Afro-Brasileiro, em Salvador, e o Museu Afro Brasil, em São Paulo como meios privilegiados de acesso às disputas conceituais e políticas que a constituem. Subjaz ao entendimento geral do estudo que as dificuldades de conceituação dessa arte de muitos nomes negra, afrodescendente, afro-orientada, diaspórica, preta etc. e os distintos significados que lhe foram sendo atribuídos ao longo do século XX, se relacionam de maneira incerta, porém constante, com as ambiguidades que informam as relações raciais no Brasil. Os capítulos que compõem essa dissertação buscam se debruçar sobre esse mosaico de usos, interpretações e definições que dão corpo e sentido, ainda que instável, ao termo. Afinal, quando se faz ou se fala em arte afrobrasileira, do que se está falando e o que se está fazendo? Quando uma exposição ou museu são organizados em torno desse conceito, que critérios e entendimentos são por eles acionados e, por fim, também criados? / privileged means to access the conceptual and political disputes that constitute it studies and emblematic exhibitions on the subject, and the contexts of creation and expography of two decisive institutions of the area, the Museu Afro-Brasileiro in Salvador and the Museu Afro Brasil in São Paulo. It underlies this study that the difficulties of conceptualizing this many named Art - black, Afro-descendent, Afrooriented, diasporic etc. - and the multiple meanings given to it along the 20th century are related in an uncertain but constant way to the ambiguities of racial relations in Brazil. The chapters of this dissertation seek to explore the multiple uses, interpretations and definitions that give body and meaning, albeit uncertain to this notion. After all, when Afro-Brazilian Art is produced or talked about, what exactly is being produced or talked about? When an exhibition or museum are organized around the subject, what understandings and criteria are being used and also created?

Essa dissertação versa sobre a noção de arte afro-brasileira, tomando os principais estudos voltados à questão, exposições emblemáticas ao redor do tema e os contextos de fundação e expografia de duas instituições decisivas da área o Museu Afro-Brasileiro, em Salvador, e o Museu Afro Brasil, em São Paulo como meios privilegiados de acesso às disputas conceituais e políticas que a constituem. Subjaz ao entendimento geral do estudo que as dificuldades de conceituação dessa arte de muitos nomes negra, afrodescendente, afro-orientada, diaspórica, preta etc. e os distintos significados que lhe foram sendo atribuídos ao longo do século XX, se relacionam de maneira incerta, porém constante, com as ambiguidades que informam as relações raciais no Brasil. Os capítulos que compõem essa dissertação buscam se debruçar sobre esse mosaico de usos, interpretações e definições que dão corpo e sentido, ainda que instável, ao termo. Afinal, quando se faz ou se fala em arte afrobrasileira, do que se está falando e o que se está fazendo? Quando uma exposição ou museu são organizados em torno desse conceito, que critérios e entendimentos são por eles acionados e, por fim, também criados? / privileged means to access the conceptual and political disputes that constitute it studies and emblematic exhibitions on the subject, and the contexts of creation and expography of two decisive institutions of the area, the Museu Afro-Brasileiro in Salvador and the Museu Afro Brasil in São Paulo. It underlies this study that the difficulties of conceptualizing this many named Art - black, Afro-descendent, Afrooriented, diasporic etc. - and the multiple meanings given to it along the 20th century are related in an uncertain but constant way to the ambiguities of racial relations in Brazil. The chapters of this dissertation seek to explore the multiple uses, interpretations and definitions that give body and meaning, albeit uncertain to this notion. After all, when Afro-Brazilian Art is produced or talked about, what exactly is being produced or talked about? When an exhibition or museum are organized around the subject, what understandings and criteria are being used and also created?

No description available.