Reflect on the chapter 6 reading from the textbook, and/or the supplemental readings, in addition to the Zoom recorded lectures and the artwork seen in Unit Two to answer the following questions:
Zoom Link- https://easyupload.io/m/1s0ek5
What are some of the ways that the Black Body is represented through the Unit Two materials?
How would you describe some of the ways that artists of Unit Two counteract the hypersexualization of the Black Body?
What are some of the ways that artists in this unit attempt to represent Black sexuality?
Which artworks did you connect with most from this unit? In what ways did those works affect you?
What are other themes that you found significant in the way that the unit readings, lectures, and/or artworks describe the Black Body?
Discussion Posts
What are some of the ways that the Black Body is represented through the Unit Two materials?
The discussed photographers choose distinct ways of taking their images as there is a particular message that they wanted to convey especially concerning the racial stereotypes surrounding the Black Body. For instance, the image of the young man with painted fingernails photographed by Gerald in Campden. Typically, the African male individual has been racially stereotyped and constrained to have a masculine black body. However, the image and especially the fingernails disrupt the whole typical narrative of the masculinity that has always been associated with men. The photographer, Lyle Ashton, will focus on the portraits of the faces and the back of her artists’ heads to show a particular concentration and focussed gaze on bringing out the African features and ancestry. Noticeably, from these images, one gets to see these individuals’ power and spirit coming from within and even behind them. The black female body was portrayed to show desirability and self-possession while also showing the subject’s value.
Which artworks did you connect with most from this unit? In what ways did those works affect you?
Mickalene Thomas, artworks specifically the Afro Goddess Looking Forward and A little Taste Outside of Love, are works that I intensively connected with since one gets a great sense of different women in their different spaces. These artworks redefine the African American female. The first artwork illustrates an intense communication between the artist and the subject in conjunctions with a social and cultural commentary. In the second artwork, the artist has forged an innovative and pictorial language that still draws on the tradition to create a new and modern image. The 70s and the black power movement’s influence can be seen in the luxuriantly patterned textiles and the Afro hairdo. These works affected me as I could critically understand the transformation undergone by the African female.
