Quite a few events scheduled all over the world for LGBTQ Pride Month 2020 were cancelled due to Coronavirus. Yet there are still digital events to check out, while different companies have been releasing celebratory products (Funko Pop! for example has its line of special Pride figurines - Batman, Hello Kitty and SpongeBob - and the company also made a donation to the It Gets Better Project View this photo). But is it possible to celebrate Pride Month with interior design? Of course it is and, to get inspired, check out this rainbow dream-like chair designed in 1938 by Don Emilio Rene Terry y Sánchez (1890–1969), known as Emilio Terry.
The French architect, artist, interior decorator and landscape designer designed sets for plays by Henry Bernstein, ballets by Edward James, photographs by Horst for Vogue magazine, and boasted among his friends Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, Gabrielle Chanel, Misia Sert, Salvador Dalí, Christian Bérard, Jean Cocteau, René Crevel, Jean Hugo and Balanchine.
Terry created furniture, tapestries and objets d'art and in his designs he was influenced by the château de Chenonceau, acquired by his family. He came up with an imaginary architectural style that was at once classical and baroque. Freely inspired by Palladio and Claude Nicolas Ledoux, it was defined by Terry as the "Louis XVII style".
In 1933, Terry made a model of a double-spiral house, called "en colimaçon" ("snail-style"), which illustrated one of his theories - the art of architecture expressed a "dream to be realised" ("rêve à réaliser"). In a way this concept goes well with what we are all fighting for - a society that treats each and everyone as equal, a dream to be realised (but certainly not an impossible dream).
The drawing is currently part of an exhibition at Paris' Musée des Arts Décoratifs celebrating the richness of its Cabinet of Drawings. Characterised by a cross-disciplinary approach,the event (from 23rd June 2020 to 31st January 2021) features more than 200,000 works ranging from the 16th century to present day, and from Europe and all the way to Japan. Among the drawings on display, there will be artworks by Le Brun, Watteau, Fragonard, Degas and Rodin, designs by ornamentalists and decorators, projects for gardens, sculptures, paintings, objects, silverware and wallpaper, plus jewellery and haute couture designs. So, there will be the proverbial something for everybody.
Thousands of people in the United States celebrated today Juneteenth with marches, rallies and parties. This day commemorates the abolition of slavery. On June 19th, 1865, the last remaining slaves on a plantation in Galveston, Texas, were informed they were free by the Union army major general Gordon Granger who read out Abraham Lincoln's emancipation proclamation. Though the president signed the proclamation more than two years earlier, many African Americans were actually still held as slaves in Confederate territory.
Though this is not a federal holiday, this is a key celebration for the black community, also known as freedom, black independence and emancipation day. This year the celebrations were also a way to remember all those unarmed people, both men and women, victims of unjustified murders, among them (just to mention a few) Ahmaud Arbery, 25, shot dead in Brunswick by two white men, a father and son, while out for a run; Breonna Taylor, 26, shot dead in March by police who entered her home in Louisville, Kentucky, without warning and George Floyd, 46, killed by a police office in Minneapolis in May. Activist and scholar Angela Davis also appeared at a Juneteenth march at the Port of Oakland, California.
In Europe Juneteenth is not celebrated, but we may have to start reconsidering this as many European cities actually built their wealth on human trafficking and slavery.
Studying textiles can lead us to make some discoveries for what regards slavery: for example the fact that profits from plantations in the West Indies where there were enslaved men, women and children were not invested to develop local Caribbean communities, but by merchants and traders in their own countries.
The dye industry in Glasgow was among the ones that prospered with the profits of slavery: in Scotland purple dyes were made with lichen dyes such as orchil, cheaper than the famous murex purple extracted from molluscs. Towards the end of the 1750s, George Gordon and his nephew, Cuthbert, patented cudbear, a purple dye made with orchil using ammonia that could dye silk or wool without the use of a mordant to fix the colour. But the company went banrupt and production halted. In 1777 George Macintosh was backed by John Glassford, a wealthy Glasgow-based Virginia merchant, along with George Bogle, James Gordon and John Robertson, and founded a cudbear dye works at Dunchattan, Dennistoun, Glasgow. Production continued after the death of the founder in 1807, and the George Macintosh & Co. dyers received financial investment from Glasgow West India merchants.
So will we consider a celebration of Juneteenth in Europe as well? Maybe we should take the issue to the European Parliament and raise more awareness about it. In the meantime, we should also start pondering more - even via textiles and dyes - about the wealth generated by slave societies in European cities and think more about how we are making the same mistakes nowadays with companies (including fashion brands) operating their own factories in other countries (such as Africa) and reinvesting their profits in the countries where their headquarters are based, rather than developing better operations and infrastructures where their workforce is manufacturing their products.
Stories of race discrimination, body shaming, sexual harassment, unfair working conditions and exploitation are rife in the fashion industry.
So far quite often these stories involved models and runway show castings, but the worldwide protests against racism that followed the killing of George Floyd, an African American, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, prompted many to reveal unfair conditions, bullying and racism in the fashion publishing industry.
Last week Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of US Vogue, offered some kind of formal mea culpa in a memo, stating that she took full responsibility for "mistakes" made during her 32-year tenure at the magazine. Wintour apologised for publishing material deemed intolerant, not giving space to black people at Vogue and not doing enough to promote black staff and designers at the fashion magazine.
"I want to say plainly that I know Vogue has not found enough ways to elevate and give space to black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators. We have made mistakes too, publishing images or stories that have been hurtful or intolerant. I take full responsibility for those mistakes," she wrote, adding "it can't be easy to be a black employee at Vogue, and there are too few of you."
Further accidents connected with racism in the publishing industry were recorded in the last few days: the editor-in-chief of the Condé Nast title Bon Appétit, Adam Rapoport, resigned after photos of Rapoport and his wife dressed as stereotypes of Puerto Ricans at a Halloween party in 2003 resurfaced. The food magazine was also accused of mistreating employees of colour.
Condé Nast's head of lifestyle video programming, Matt Duckor, was forced to resign when staffers stated that the company didn't feature people of colour in videos and did not pay them for appearances; Christene Barberich, the editor of the lifestyle website Refinery29, also stepped down after members of the staff stated they had experienced racist discrimination at the company.
Among the brave people who came forward and denounced racist incidents there are Shelby Ivey Christie, former digital marketing and sales planner at Vogue and parent media organization Condé Nast in 2016 and now a fashion critic and fashion and costume historian herself, and Zara Rahim, Vogue's former director of communications.
Both recounted their experiences on social media: Christie who supports black designers and black contributions to the fashion landscape, and hopes one day to organise an exhibition focused on black designers, stated on Twitter that her time at Vogue and Condé Nast "was the most challenging + miserable time" of her career, explaining "The bullying + testing from white counterparts, the completely thankless work, the terrible base pay + the racism was exhausting." Her experiences include a white male executive arriving to a meeting with the digital business team wearing a chicken suit, gold chains and baggy pants and rapping to start the meeting. Even when the incident was reported, the man wasn't fired.
Christie also highlighted how black employees at the publishing house were overqualified, underpaid and overworked (she was assigned additional territories spanning the West Coast to Italy, and ended up working up to 20 hours a day). Rahim, who worked for the organization in 2017, had similar experiences and tweeted "The trauma I carry from Conde is something I have a hard time talking about. I was the only woman of color in a leadership role."
Last week, African American former member of Vogue's staff and colleague of Anna Wintour, André Leon Talley stated about her memo on SiriusXM's Sandyland that the statement comes as Samira Nasr was named US Bazaar's new editor-in-chief, the first black editor-in-chief in the magazine's 153-year-old history, an appointment that will have an impact on Wintour, adding "I want to say one thing: Dame Anna Wintour is a colonial broad, she’s a colonial dame, she comes from British, she’s part of an environment of colonialism. She is entitled and I do not think she will ever let anything get in the way of her white privilege."
It sounds oxymoronic that an industry constantly running after the next trend, was so behind when it came to racism, but it is exactly like that: US Vogue's first black cover star was model Beverly Johnson in 1974, and in 2018 Tyler Mitchell became the first black photographer to shoot the cover for the September issue of Vogue that featured Beyoncé.
Italian Vogue entered history instead when the late editor Franca Sozzani unveiled the Black Issue in 2008, that featured Liya Kebede, Sessilee Lopez, Jourdan Dunn, and Naomi Campbell on a series of covers, plus about 100 pages of black models, shot by Steven Meisel. A year later Sozzani celebrated Barbie's 50th anniversary with a supplement starring a black Barbie on the cover and mainly black Barbies in the photoshoots featured in its pages.
British Vogue has currently got a minority editor, Edward Enninful, who has been opening up the magazines to a wider and more diverse group of people.
Yet things may not change so soon at US Vogue: Condé Nast's CEO, Roger Lynch recently stated indeed that Wintour will not be stepping down her role. But, at the same time, the publisher and the magazine will have to come to terms with other issues: the global Coronavirus pandemic had a devastating impact on the industry as many fashion weeks were cancelled, while the Met Gala was postponed, shoots had to be reinvented, with models photographing themselves in lockdown, directed remotely by photographers and stylists, while magazine advertising revenues are constantly going down.
Besides, COVID-19 dramatically suspended our collective lives, made us reconsider our needs and reminded even the most impenitent fashionistas that health is more valuable than your next frock; lockdown has also redefined the job of influencers who turned from indefatigable socialising fashion addicted world globetrotters into stay-at-home bakers (in some cases like Italy's Chiara Ferragni sponsored by food companies rather than fashion houses...). More recently the world has been shaken by the brutal killing of George Floyd and, last week, of another African American, Rayshard Brooks, killed by a white police officer in Atlanta. As the US enter the fourth week of unrest while the number of Coronavirus cases is still on the rise in some countries, it is clear that the fashion industry as we knew it is a dated concept and the endis definitely near, not just for Anna Wintour, but for an entire system that supported rather than prevented discrimination.
Copyright matters may not be a priority while the world is gripped by a major pandemic and by civil unrest in the US (with global protests expanding to the rest of the world) in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis almost three weeks ago, and after a new violent episode involving another black man, Rayshard Brooks, 27, shot dead on Friday night in Atlanta by the police over reports he had fallen asleep in his car in the drive-through line of a local restaurant. Yet there has been a story in the news that is connected with the American police forces and with copyrights as well.
It regards the symbol of the Marvel character The Punisher that has turned into the unofficial symbol for Blue Lives Matter, an organisation sharing the same initials of the Black Lives Matter movement, and supporting police officers.
Though only some officers have been using the distinctive skull with dripping teeth logo accompanied by the "Thin Blue Line" American flag, there are quite a few images online of members of the police forces wearing the logo on their bullet proof vests or of stickers and decals with the logo applied on patrol cars.
In 2017, the police department in Solvay, New York, actually refused to remove the logo from its vehicles when citizens requested to do so (the police department highlighted in that case they wanted to show how they stand between good and evil). In the same year the Catlettsburg Police department in Kentucky was criticised when it branded vehicles with Punisher decals and the slogan "Blue Lives Matter" and was forced to remove them.
Besides, in October 2019 a police officer wearing the logo was spotted at a public meeting of Dallas' Community Police Oversight Board, and there have been reports about the skull appearing on the uniforms and riot gear of officers patrolling cities during the anti-racism protests that have been taking place after the death of George Floyd.
Comic creators - among them Mags Visaggio (Vagrant Queen), Matt Wilson (Supreme Villainy), Eric Palicki (Dead Beats), Kat Verhoeven (Meat and Bone) and Gerry Conway, who co-created the character of Frank Castle, a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War who becomes The Punisher after witnessing his family murdered by the Mob, with artists John Romita Sr. and Ross Andru - complained on social media and asked Marvel to sue those police officers that use the Punisher logo.
Conway, whose father was a policeman and whose uncle was captain of the academy of New York City, disagrees with the police officers using the logo and finds this disturbing.
The Punisher isn't indeed a hero, but a brutal and aggressive anti-hero, he is a social failure and the embodiment of a failed justice system. Besides, he threats, tortures and kills, techniques that seem to be used by the American police forces, especially against the black community, as proved by multiple incidents occurred throughout the decades.
So wearing a patch or carrying a keychain with the Punisher logo seems to hint at the fact that the wearer supports the same behaviour of that comic book character, and it would be an oxymoron, considering that a force that should respect the law, is instead embracing the modus operandi of an outlaw and a criminal.
Even in the comic book (The Punisher #13), the main character expressed his views on the police. The main character states indeed about police idolising him: "I'll say this once. We're not the same. You took an oath to uphold the law. You help people. I gave all that up a long time ago. You don't do what I do. Nobody does. You boys need a role model? His name is Captain America, and he'd be happy to have you."
In reaction to the use of this logo, some have taken to social media calling on Disney (that bought Marvel in 2009 and that recently announced they are donating $5 million to social justice organisations, starting with $2 million to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) to send cease and desists letters for the misuse of The Punisher logo and sue the police departments that keep on using it.
Marvel never gave permission to police departments to use the logo and, according to reports the lawyers of Marvel and Disney repeatedly sent letters to departments about this matter. Yet you can't actually stop someone from wearing something like a patch or a pin that they may have legitimately bought from a brick and mortar store or online, so legal action can't be taken against the final wearer, but it could be taken against the officers if they sold such merchandise with the logo.
At the same time there is a way to stop the circulation of the manipulated Punisher skull logo: action could be taken against the manufacturers of the product or against the vendors and distributors selling items such as stickers, badges and patches online.
Specific sites could indeed be asked to remove such products (that are currently available on Amazon, Etsy and ebay, quite often accompanied by the words "patriotic" and "gift for a cop"). Manufacturers and vendors may find it difficult defending themselves from copyright infringement accusations as most of these products are accompanied by titles that contain the words "The Punisher", clearly indicating the product is inspired by the comic book character and it is not just a coincidence (mind you, The Thin Blue Line USA company was actually smart enough to describe a bundle containing a flag, cap and vehicle emblem with The Punisher logo simply as "Skull Bundle", so they are actually aware of copyright infringement...).
Will Disney take legal action? Time will tell, but in the meantime other people are taking action: Demonte Price, a young African American artist, created in collaboration with Gerry Conway a Black Lives Matter / Punisher T-shirt. All funds raised by the sale will got to the Black Lives Matter movement.
"In addition to this going towards a great cause that I'm passionate about as it concerns the futures of young African American men and women like myself, I felt this was a greater opportunity to work with one of my personal favorite writers", Price states on the site selling the T-shirt. Conway added: "For too long, symbols associated with a character I co-created have been co-opted by forces of oppression and to intimidate black Americans. This character and symbol was never intended as a symbol of oppression. This is a symbol of a systematic failure of equal justice. It's time to claim this symbol for the cause of equal justice and Black Lives Matter." Looks like, while the law in this case may be slow at sorting the matter, ordinary people can actually make a difference and return the logo to the comic book universe where it belongs while actually helping a good cause.
Let's conclude our exploration of the power of collages in art that started a few days ago, through the work of Frida Orupabo. The artist is particularly interested in the depiction of the black female body in the media.
She therefore employs found photographs and images from her personal archive and combines them in digital collages that she uses to explore race, gender, identity, sexuality, the male gaze and colonial violence.
A self-taught artist and trained sociologist, Orupabo first started uploading and streaming her collages onto social media platforms to intervene in the endless cycle of images constructing the black female body produced by art, colonialism, science and popular culture.
The feed featured artworks, historical photographs, fragments of text and archival documents relating to the depiction of black people across the centuries.
In the Giardini's Central Pavilion Orupabo showcased instead a series of images of black women taken from her digital collages, these images, mounted on aluminium, were cut, reassambled and held together with paper pins reminiscent of paper dolls or shadow puppets.
In these collages the figures confront the viewers with a gaze that often accuses, while their gestures and postures point at the acquisition and assertion of power and the subversion of history. Among the figures Orupabo represented in this installation, there was one who called to mind Saartje (or Saartjie) Bartman, a woman who suffered from steatopygia and who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in 19th century Europe as the "Hottentot Venus".
Challenging popular culture, society and history (think about how fascism considered Africa as a land for masculine regeneration where men could regain vigour, and of exotic degeneration at the same time, which meant colonists, believing in their racial superiority, felt legitimised to abuse local women treating them in inhuman and degrading ways), Orupabo reclaims these bodies, liberating them from stereotypes and tropes and from violence, exploitation and subjugation.
In the last few posts we looked at the theme of the collage through the work of artists expressing themselves with videos and static images, but there are artists that use this technique in a more subtle way.
If you look at Njideka Akunyili Crosby's paintings for example, you will see portraits and domestic interiors, scenes that at times feature her and her family.
Some details like decorative ceiling tiles and air conditioning units, crocheted sofa covers and a paraffin lamp set on a table evoke memories of Nigeria, while an Ikea floor lamp, a French door fridge freezer and a MacBook, tell us we are in a Western style apartment.
The interiors look flat, but, at the same time, they are very deep: windows, doorways and satin curtains frame openings and lead the viewer onto other spaces, while screen walls reveal the architectures behind.
If you focus on the floors or on the chairs you will discover that they are populated with faces; these collaged transferred appropriated portraits at times also seem to have links with fashion as some of the images show models on a runway.
By incorporating these appropriated images into her works, the artist adds a lot of information to the paintings, while populating them with hundreds of people even when the main subjects are actually absent and architectures prevail.
A member of the Nigerian diaspora, Njideka Akunyili Crosby emigrated to the United States to study as a teenager and this dichotomy between her origins and her adoptive country often ends up creating interesting combinations of influences like the one between Nigerian and Western interiors.
In her painting "Janded", Crosby opts for a minimalist approach with a portrait that looks from a distance like a dark rectangle but that, as you get closer, reveals a woman with a Western hairstyle borrowed from Tyra Banks, an antique white alabaster cameo earring and a Yoruba tribal scar on her cheek.
The scar is a mark that indicates the woman comes from a rural setting or a village, but the hairstyle and earring that evokes memories of Johannes Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring", connect her with another life outside Nigeria. The title of the painting comes indeed from Nigerian slang "jand" as a noun and as a verb, meaning "abroad" and "to travel abroad".
Through this woman Njideka Akunyili Crosby represents therefore a meeting of cultures and the way she looks outside the frame is inspiring, inviting us to walk towards the future embracing dichotomies, contrasts and differences.
In previous posts we looked at video collages, so let's continue the thread with collages of images via the works of Tavares Strachan.
Born in Nassau, Bahamas, the artist who in 2013 represented the Bahamas at the 55th International Venice Biennale, works with a variety of media, and among the themes he has been focusing on recently there are invisibility and people written out of history, themes that emerged also from his works on display at the 58th International Art Exhibition in Venice.
A while back Strachan started wondering very simple questions - who decides who becomes invisible and who gets reminded in a book? The Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, was compiled almost exclusively by white men and could be therefore seen as a tool of imperial conquest that appropriated and condensed knowledge as a means of signalling cultural domination.
Moving from this volume, Strachan decided to come up with his very own compendium of stories - The Encyclopedia of Invisibility - featuring 15,000 entries - among them people, places, objects, concepts, artworks and scientific phenomena.
Among the various entries the artist has included in this post-colonial book, there is a ghost town in Arizona, quantum gravity and the saola, a bovine known as the Asian unicorn.
Some of the pages of the Encyclopedia of Invisibility were then incoporated into his visual collages that combine appropriated photographs (from James Baldwin to Queen Elizabeth II), with diagrams and graphics showing Strachan's wide interests.
The book is therefore a representation of a dichotomy between those who are seen and those who are unseen, and the pages of his encyclopedia were also the inspiration for other works, such as Strachan's "Hidden Stories", pieces looking at truth and visibility that honour the lives of radical individuals.
Among them the Panchen Lama abducted at 6 and never found, but celebrated by Strachan in a cube-shaped mineral oil and glass sculpture, Saint Lucian poet and playwright Derek Walcott and 14th century Venetian-born author Christine de Pizan who, in order to support herself and her family, turned to writing, and produced the volumes The Book of the City of Ladies and The Treasure of the City of Ladies that showed the importance of women's contributions to society. Strachan remembered both the authors via limestone and neon bookends propping up volumes selected by the artist himself.
Strachan is fascinated by different stories of people written out of history, such as Matthew Henson, an African American explorer who arrived in the North Pole in 1909 with Robert Peary, who then took all the merit.
The manipulation of history led Strachan to discover the story of the first African American cosmonaut, Robert Henry Lawrence Jr.,a genius physical chemist who trained as an astronaut.
Strachan himself actually trained as an astronaut in 2008 at the Yuri Gagarin Training Center in Star City, Russia and in experiments in space travel conducted in Nassau under the Bahamas Air and Space Exploration Center (BASEC), the artist's version of NASA for his native country.
Lawrence died in 1967, while instructing a flight test trainee learning the steep-descent glide technique, he was ejected out of the back seat horizontally and died on impact. Eleven years passed before another African American was chosen to undergo astronaut training. Mrs Lawrence apparently receied many hateful and racist letters after his death, saying things like "glad he was dead because now there would be no coons on the moon".
Strachan celebrated Robert Henry Lawrence Jr with a brief neon obituary in which he revealed the racism directed towards the astronaut after his death, but he also dedicated to the astronaut a pulsating neon light cardiovascular blue and purple floating sculpture that, emerging from the darkness, encourages people to think about truth and visibility.
On December 3, 2018, Strachan launched "ENOCH" into space aboard a Space X Falcon 9 rocket. Created in collaboration with LACMA Art + Technology Lab, ENOCH is a 3U satellite containing a 24 carat gold canopic jar with a bust of Lawrence, blessed by a Japanese Shinti priest. The satellite is expected to continue circling the Earth for seven years in a sun-synchronous orbit, so that, while the satellite will remain unseen to us, Lawrence's spirit will symbolically still be present in the universe.
The theme of the invisibles turning visible has become prominent in our lives as well and not just in art projects: think about how Coronavirus has tragically exposed long-standing inequalities in healthcare and labour systems and how the killing of George Floyd has resonated globally, prompting people to join protests against racism and to denounce episodes of racial discrimination in the workplace. Yet, let's hope that Strachan will continue to expand his encyclopedia and hidden stories: there are so many people, places and events that were forgotten and written out of history for different reasons and that just await rediscovery.
Last year Arthur Jafa was awarded the Golden Lion for the Best Participant at the 58th International Art Exhibition in Venice for his 2019 film "The White Album". The motivation stated, "Jafa uses appropriated and original footage to reflect upon the issue of race. Just as the film critiques a moment fraught with violence, in tenderly portraying the artist’s friends and family, it also speaks to our capacity for love."
In the complex last few months in which the news were dominated first by the Coronavirus pandemic and then by the horrific death of George Floyd, a black man killed in May by a Minneapolis policeman who knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, we may have not been able to see much love. Yet we have seen solidarity, sacrifice and a strong will for change, feelings on which we could ponder a bit more via Jafa's work.
The artist, filmmaker and cinematographer was born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1960, but he is based in Los Angeles. He worked with Stanley Kubrick on "Eyes Wide Shut" and Spike Lee on "Crooklyn", but he is better known for winning the "Best Cinematography" Award at Sundance for the independent film "Daughters of the Dust" (1991), directed by Julie Dash. The film went on to inspire Beyoncé for the visuals in her film-album "Lemonade". Besides, Jafa also worked as director of photography on Solange's videos "Don't Touch My Hair" and "Cranes in the Sky", and on Beyoncé's "Formation", editing also Jay-Z's video "4:44".
One of Jafa's key artworks remains "Love is the Message, the Message is Death" (2016; part of the title, as you may guess, is inspired by 1973 MFSB's track "Love is the Message"), a multilayered visual collage in which joy, horror, beauty and alienation are all combined together.
The video shows a series of rapid sequences relating to sorrow and happiness, violence and triumph, so you will see in it a white police officer shooting unarmed black 50-year-old Walter Scott in 2015, but also civil rights demonstrations in the '60s, Beyoncé dancing on a balcony, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Notorious B.I.G., and former US President Barack Obama speaking, with Kanye West's "Ultralight Beam" as soundtrack.
Jafa developed a passion for collecting images from newspapers, magazines, books, and films; he has been doing it since the '80s, when he started saving them in notebooks in which he juxtaposed images showing the brutalities against blacks across American history with jazz musicians such as Miles Davis.
Jafa uses these images as references for his artwork and films (he is also a long-time collaborator of another artist who uses collages of images in his films, Kahlil Joseph) as he did in "Love is the Message, the Message is Death" and in last year's "The White Album", showcased at the Venice Biennale in the Central Pavilion at the Giardini.
This video is a mix of news clips, home and music videos, memes, historical photographs and other assorted materials collected from the Internet and other sources to examine the theme of race in media-based culture. "The White Album" investigates the tension between the violence and insanity of white supremancy (clips go from the beating of white trucker Reginald Denny in the 1992 LA riots to white supremacist and mass murderer Dylann Roof) and Jafa's love for the people in his life who happen to be white.
Jafa also works with sculptures and in the Arsenale space at the Venice Biennale he displayed his "Big Wheel" series, beside a single photo of his son at two ("Little Buddha") and a sound installation playing Soul and Rhythm & Blues songs. "Big Wheel I, II and III" consists in three monumental black tires from Monster trucks wrapped up in chains and with a melded metal, meteorite-like hub from which bits and pieces of blue bandanas emerge.
Inspired by the monster truck culture in Mississippi, they look like giant medallions, but they actually represent something else: the chains point at subjugation and the fact that the tires were enchained on the floor or suspended above ground on an ominous structure reminiscent of the gallows, hinted restrained and imprisoned human beings .
Yet while the chains indicated restraint, the tires also referenced cars, mobility and the freedom of being on the road. They therefore hinted at the US automobile industry, its decline and the fact that it provided livelihood for black people, so the three monumental tires were a testament to the faded agrarian South where the artist was born and to the automobile industry and its black workers, considered as discarded, and therefore disposable, technology.
It will be interesting to see how Jafa's practice will develop in the next few months and if he will create a new film inspired by the recent events. You feel that his fractured and rich sampled films would be perfect to narrate the crucial historical moment we are living now, with its challenges, struggles and crises that will hopefully bring real change.
In the previous post we mentioned the kente scarves donned by members of the US Congress while honouring George Floyd. Textiles can be used in symbolical ways and we looked at fabrics in connection with symbols in other features in which we mentioned for example Dutch wax fabric company Vlisco.
The latter offers information on its site on fabricsprints, patterns and motifs charged with specific meanings. One of its archival fabrics from the 1970s featured for example "Akplèkan" necklaces. The name refers to a string of 18 beads such as cowry shells or polished palm nuts and wild apple nuts. While the string could be thrown in a certain way and, based on how the beads landed their positions, it could reveal something about a person and their future, the Akplèkan beads connected by woven thread as shown in this textile, symbolise strength in numbers. This concept - strength in numbers - makes us think about what has been happening in the last three weeks with the global mobilization against racism that followed George Floyd's death.
People are globally calling for change and it looks like some companies linked with the fashion industry are listening. Vlisco issued this week a statement by its CEO David Suddens that was published on the social media pages of the company in which Suddens explains how the company - founded in 1846 and now operating three print factories, one in Helmond, The Netherlands, and two in Africa, in Accra and Abidjan - employs 1,650 people across Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast and the DRC. While the company has pursued diversity and equality among its staff in their African and Dutch headquarters, Suddens explained in his letter that their objective is aiming for a more diverse composition of its staff, especially when it comes to their Executive Committee that has only got three Black members out of eleven.
There are also other goals that the company would like to reach in future: Vlisco has indeed been working towards building a textile park and a textile supply chain in Africa and has been looking for a site in the Ivory Coast to start spinning and weaving Ivorian cotton. In the meantime, it has vested 20 million euros in the company's Abidjan-based factory and built a network of young creative talent across the region, called Vlisco & Co. Local young talents will be able to design their own prints through this network, have them produced in the Abidjan-based print workshop and sold them in a special store, and their works will also be part of a design competition judged by an African jury. This is a sort of new development of another project launched last year in which the women of the City of Joy in Bukavu designed prints in honour of Dr Dennis Mukwege (DRC), who won the Nobel Peace prize in 2018 for his work in treating women who have been gang-raped by rebel forces. Profits from the sales of these prints were then donated to start a fashion and design school in Bukavu.
In future, Suddens stated in his message they would like to keep on supporting women, train more tailors and seamstresses and focus on the concept of "mass bespoke" garment manufacturing in Africa, conceived as a more sustainable option compared to polluting fast fashion.
While one textile company in the massive fashion industry may not be enough to make a tangible change, you wonder if their policy - doing things rather than merely talking about them ("These are things that we do and will continue to do. They are modest but they are what we can do practically with the means we have. We don't talk about it very much; we just want to do it," Suddens states towards the end of his letter) - is more acceptable than the policy of all those more powerful fashion houses and brands hiring Diversity Councils and Forums for diversity, Equity and Inclusion, but still committing the same mistakes over and over again such as releasing a product that may offend consumers or keeping on ignoring diversity on the runway. Perhaps to bring real changes in the fashion industry we have to stop talking about possible changes and more simply start taking action.
Democratic lawmakers in US Congress took a knee before presenting legislation today to end excessive use of force by police across the States. The legislation should also make it easier to identify, track, and prosecute police misconduct.
The bill was introduced in response to the killings of unarmed black Americans by police officers - the latest tragic episode that sparked protests and demos all over the world, involved George Floyd, a black man killed in May by a Minneapolis policeman who knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
According to the proposed legislation - that should help providing more transparency - police officers involved in misconduct would not be protected from being prosecuted, choke-holds would be prohibited and there would be new restrictions to prevent law enforcement officers from using force. Besides, the Justice Department would be allowed to conduct investigations of potential misconduct and also help states conduct independent investigations. The legislation would also ban racial profiling and require police to wear body cameras; it would also create a "National Police Misconduct Registry" that would stop officers from transferring to a different department with past misconduct going undetected.
The bill will be discussed Wednesday at a House Judiciary Committee hearing where testimony on police brutality and racial profiling will also be heard, but the protests after George Floyd's death have already brought some changes with the mayors of New York and Los Angeles pledging to cut their departments' budgets. Besides, Minneapolis lawmakers vowed to disband the Minneapolis Police Department where four officers were charged with Floyd's killing.
Before discussing the bill, Karen Bass, Chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Jerrold Nadler, the House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Senator Kamala Harris, Senator Cory Booker and Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, joined a group of Democrats in a tribute to George Floyd.
They took a moment of silence and knelt at Capitol's Emancipation Hall after reading the names of Floyd and others who were killed in accidents involving the police. All of them wore kente cloth scarves handed out by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).
Kente cloth is woven in narrow strips sewn together and is characterised by striking colours. Some of the motifs of this traditional cloth are also used symbolically to hint for example at resistance against foreign military domination. Throughout the decades, Kente has inspired many creative minds including Ghanaian artist El Anatsui.
The scarves donned by the CBC members in 2018 were created - at the request of LaDavia Drane Esq., former Clinton's Director of African-American Outreach, and Dr. Kwamme Anderson, former VP of Congressional Black Caucus Foundation - by fashion designer Titi Wreh, a Liberian immigrant herself who arrived in the States in the mid-'80s to study. In that case Wreh employed colours - that also reappeared in the scarved wore by the Democrats today - in a symbolical way: black for maturation and spiritual energy; blue for peacefulness, harmony and love; green for vegetation, planting, harvesting, growth and spiritual renewal; pink for the female essence of life and red for political and spiritual moods.
