Since 2020, West has been drawing and posting ink tributes on his social media of African-American people slain by police or targeted by racists, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Sandra Bland and Michael Brown, to name a few.
“For many of us Black nerds, Marvel’s characters are particularly relatable. They are often hated and hunted by the powers that be,” West said. “There isn’t a more American form of portraiture than black ‘inks’ over white, to honor those that faced this nation’s fear and loathing of the Black body.”
West has also posted ink tributes to civil rights leaders and protestors like John Lewis and Gloria Richardson Dandridge (seen below).
West, who is also a contributor to GBN (check out his prolific and eclectic Music Monday playlists on this site), recently did a Q&A with us to share more insight into the process and journey that led to his drawings and the upcoming exhibit:
GBN: When you started posting and sharing your drawings on social media, what was the response?
Marlon West: The response was very positive. They were met with surprise from many, as I had limited myself to drawing only effects and instructional drawovers for decades. It took being on lockdown, away from some of the best artists on the planet, and feeling the despair that so many of us did around George Floyd’s murder to move to draw what I initially thought would be four drawings. I’ve done more than 40.
Marlon West (photo courtesy Marlon West)
When you decided who you were going to draw, how did you decide what image of them to use?
Almost all of them are based on photos that have been widely seen. Many are in fact selfies taken by the subjects themselves. It felt very intimate to draw them, staring into their eyes while I did so. It was often tear inducing to do so for the hours it took to do each one. But I found it cathartic to sit alone and try to honor each one.
Did you ever receive any feedback from any family or loved ones of your subjects?
A good friend knows Michael Brown Sr. I created, until this exhibit, the only physical copy of any of them to give to him. He was thankful, but understandably guarded.
How did the museum display of your work come about?
My friend and colleague reached out to the museum regarding them. They were very receptive to the idea. I am super flattered and honored. They are also leaning into presenting them in the comic style nature that I drew them.
You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.comor create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website (transcript below):
SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Saturday, March 5th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
It’s a quote from contemporary artist and member of the Black Arts MovementBetye Saar, best known for her assemblage style and her 1972 work titled The Liberation of Aunt Jemima. Here’s the quote:
“It is my goal as an artist to create works that expose injustice and reveal beauty. The rainbow is literally a spectrum of color while spiritually a symbol of hope and promise.”
Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
If you like these Daily Drops, please consider following us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can give a positive rating or review, share your favorite episodes on social media, or go old school and tell a friend.
For more Good Black News, you can check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.
Here is GBN’s Daily Drop for Thursday, February 3rd, 2022, about the creation of The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore, MD, the first all African-American wax museum in the U.S.
Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of GoodBlackNews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Thursday, February 3rd, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing. It’s in the category for Black Museums and Landmarks we call “Get the Knowledge”:
Sociologist Dr. Elmer Martin and his wife, Dr. Joanna Martin, wanted to teach Black history in a way that would grab kids’ attention—so they did it with wax. The Martins had wax heads made in the likenesses of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Nat Turner, then used department store mannequins for the bodies.
They originally presented the figures at schools and community centers in Baltimore, Maryland but after garnering donations and grants, the figures were upgraded, expanded in number, and permanently installed at the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in 1983.
Just over two decades later, in 2004, the Great Blacks in Wax Museum was recognized by the United States Congress and designated The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum. If you want to learn more about the Martins and the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, check out the links provided in today’s show notes.
This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing, and available at workman.com, Amazon,Bookshop and other online retailers. Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot. For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.
NEW YORK, NY— The International Center of Photography (ICP) presents a powerful exhibition focusing on the work of five emerging Black artists who have turned the lens inward to explore and capture the “unseen” moments of their lives during a time of unprecedented change.
INWARD: Reflections on Interiority features newly commissioned photographs by Djeneba Aduayom, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Quil Lemons, Brad Ogbonna, and Isaac West.
On view through January 10, 2022, INWARD is curated by Isolde Brielmaier, Ph.D., ICP’s curator-at-large, and newly-appointed Deputy Director for the New Museum.
Although a number of these photographers have worked on assignment for major publications such as the New York Times, Vogue, Vanity Fair and Time, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see their artistic and personal work in their first museum exhibition.
The photographers showcased in INWARD use a range of manual and digital image-making tools in their individual practices—for this exhibition, they have created the photographs using iPhone.
The resulting images move beyond the endless scope of the constructed selfie to examine the intimate interactions and inner thoughts that make up their daily experiences as artists in a time of Covid-19, Black Lives Matter, and the 2020 U.S. election.
Artists Djeneba Aduayom, Brad Ogbonna, Isaac West, Arielle Bobb-Willis, and Quil Lemons, with curator Isolde Brielmaier, at the opening of “INWARD: Reflections on Interiority” at the International Center of Photography.
“The five artists featured in INWARD provide a thought-provoking window into their interior lives,” said curator Isolde Brielmaier. “The revealing new photographs explore intimate thoughts and personal relationships with great honesty, as the artists delve deep into the new reality and challenges of our contemporary lives at a time of global introspection.”
Exhibition Overview
Smartphones have often been used to generate images of public space and events in the broader outside world. iPhone has democratized image-making, and more recently, has been widely utilized as an impactful outward-facing tool to capture the human side of this particular moment of upheaval and turmoil. In INWARD, the artists reverse the focus to document their inner lives, and in the process show the full potential of iPhone in a fine art setting.
Revealing deep self-reflection, the work of Djeneba Aduayom explores her inner thoughts and subjectivity. As an introvert, she was at ease at home, sitting still, and being quiet in the company of herself during the pandemic. This quiet confidence can be seen in her self-portraits, in which she poses for the camera and directly gazes at the viewer. These images are punctuated by smaller, more abstract “studies” of objects and the human form of the artist’s own body.
Much of Arielle Bobb-Willis’s work is born out of her experience battling depression from an early age. She manipulates color, shape, form, and light, giving way to abstract images that reference ideas of the beautiful, the strange, isolation, and belonging. Influenced by painting, her use of bright colors speaks to the artist’s desire to claim power and joy in the face of confusion, sadness, and uncertainty.
Quil Lemons presents self-portraits from his series entitled Daydreams, 2021, which document his very personal journey, a process of self-exploration and self-validation: “As a Black queer man, there is no space for me, so I constantly carve one,” he states. He confidently defines his racial and gender identity in ways that allow for the intertwined, co-existence of both. His work visually articulates both self-assurance and the ongoing vulnerability with which he contends.
The work of Brad Ogbonna is comprised of a broad series of portraits of family, friends, and himself. In the style of some of the most important historical West African portrait photographers, such as Malick Sidibé, Meissa Gaye, Seydou Keïta and others, he has created, in collaboration with his friends and family members, a series of intimate portraits that underscore family history and relationships with a strong reference to the artist’s Nigerian culture as well as his late father. “I didn’t think much about the past until my Dad died,” said Ogbonna. “Shortly thereafter I inherited his first photo album filled with photos from his youth spent in Nigeria. At the time those images felt like a portal to the not-so-distant past and left me with many more questions than answers. I was enthralled by the mystery of it all.”
Isaac West is inspired by his girlfriend Naima in his series entitled Love, 2021. He focuses on the small ways in which human interactions, gestures, and expressions both encapsulate and demonstrate larger ideas about love, intimacy, and care. Through his strikingly bold colors and stark lines and use of light, as well as the strong articulation and centering of Blackness, he highlights everyday acts of kindness—grooming, eating, playing—in order to underscore these
About the Artists Djeneba Aduayom, @djeneba.aduayom
Informed by her career as a professional dancer, Djeneba Aduayom progressed into photography and brought her love of travel, movement and emotive performance into her imagery and subsequent directing work. Drawing inspiration from her cultural mix of French, Italian and African heritage, her concepts and artistic expression are rooted in her personal exploration of the inner worlds of her imagination. In 2020, Aduayom received The One Club for Creativity One Show gold award for her conceptual fashion series “A Pas de Deux” in collaboration with New York magazine’s The Cut. Her portraits for The New York Times Magazine’s “The 1619 Project” were honored by the International Center of Photography’s 2020 Infinity Awards in the Online Platform and New Media category. The American Society of Magazine Editors’ 2020 Awards also selected Aduayom’s Billboard portrait of St. Vincent as “Best Profile Photograph.” Aduayom is now based just outside of Los Angeles, CA.
Arielle Bobb-Willis, @ariellebobbwillis
Born and raised in New York City, with pit stops in South Carolina and New Orleans, photographer Arielle Bobb-Willis has been using the camera for nearly a decade as a tool of empowerment. Battling depression from an early age, Bobb-Willis found solace behind the lens and has developed a visual language that speaks to the complexities of life: the beautiful, the strange, belonging, isolation, and connection. Inspired by masters like Jacob Lawrence and Benny Andrews, Bobb-Willis applies a “painterly” touch to her photography by documenting people in compromising and disjointed positions as way to highlight these complexities. Her photographs are all captured in urban and rural cities, from the South to North, East to West. Bobb-Willis travels throughout the U.S. as a way of finding “home” in any grassy knoll, or city sidewalk, reminding us to stay connected and grounded during life’s transitional moments.
Quil Lemons, @quillemons
Quil Lemons is a New York-based photographer with a distinct visual language that interrogates ideas around masculinity, family, queerness, race, beauty, and popular culture. His inaugural series GLITTERBOY (2017) introduced Lemons to the world and started a dialogue that would act as a common thread through much of his work to come. In it, he dusted black men with glitter to combat the stereotypes and stigmas placed upon their bodies. This concept of challenging what is acceptable for the black male body developed even further in BOY PARTS (2020). Simultaneously, Lemons began an exploration of the black family portrait with his series PURPLE (2018) and project WELCOME HOME (2018). Images from both projects gave an intimate glimpse into his home life and the modern black American family structure in Philadelphia. Lemons has previously exhibited at Contact Festival, Toronto, 2018; Kuumba Festival, Toronto, 2019; and Aperture, NY 2019. His work has appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, and publications including Variety, Vogue, and the New York Times.
Brad Ogbonna, @bradogbonna
Brad Ogbonna was born and raised in Saint Paul, MN, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. A first generation Nigerian-American and a self-taught photographer, his work focuses on the black experience: his own, as well as the many different iterations he has seen while traveling domestically and abroad as a member of the diaspora. His work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and New York magazine, and he frequently collaborates with the artist Kehinde Wiley. In 2019, Ogbonna’s work was featured at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Isaac West, @isaacwest
Isaac West is a Liberian-born, U.S.-based photographer, artist, and creative director who specializes in conceptual art and minimalism. West’s luminous portraits evoke a contemporary regality. In 2018, West photographed two issues for Paper magazine, “Higher Ground” (web issue) and “West’s World” (spring print issue). In 2019, West photographed the actress Zendaya for the cover of the Summer print “Extreme” issue of Paper, and West was also named one of Paper magazine’s “100 People Taking Over 2019.” West photographed Parker Kit Hill for the spring 2019 print issue cover of Funk Magazine, a magazine dedicated to the LGBT community. Vogue Italia featured West’s third-biggest photography project called “8Minutes & 46Seconds” as a full spread in their 2020 summer print issue. West’s work was featured in the Aperture Foundation’s 2020 exhibition The New Black Vanguard in New York, NY, which then traveled to Australia and Qatar in 2021.
Ticket information: Admission to ICP is by timed ticketed entry only to ensure limited capacity and other safety standards are met. Tickets can be reserved online at icp.org/tickets. updated Visitor Information and Accessibility guidelines and policies.
SHEBOYGAN, WI —An exhibition of ceramics by the artist Woody De Othello will be on view at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center from September 26, 2021 through September 25, 2022.
Woody De Othello: Hope Omenspresents a series of nearly 20 large anthropomorphic vessels based on African spiritual objects that, among other things, address the tumultuous nature of the last year.
Woody De Othello is best known for his large-scale sculptures of familiar domestic objects, which are often imbued with a kind of human personage. For Hope Omens, he presents an entirely new body of work.
Woody De Othello, Closed Reflection, 2021; ceramic and glaze. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco. (Photo: John Wilson White)
Many of the sculptures were produced using molds that Othello created during his Arts/Industry Pottery residency at the Kohler Co. factory in early 2020. While he was in residence, the world outside the factory began to shift with the beginning of the pandemic. The residency was cut short by several weeks and forced Othello to bring home some of the molds to continue his work.
“Woody De Othello’s work has always been prescient in its combination of humor, history, and composition. But the saliency of this newest body of work speaks poignantly and pointedly about the time we are living in, reaffirming the role that artists can play in articulating a kinder and more just world for us all. The Arts Center is thrilled to be showing these works for the first time,” said Laura Bickford, curator, John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
Woody De Othello. (Photo: Josh Gruetzmacher)
Othello draws on African nkisi, or objects that are believed to be invested with spiritual energy. Breath and breathing are ideas often expressed in Othello’s vessel-like forms covered in mouths. Many of his new works feature hands and arms, evoking embrace and consolation, or ears and mouths, offering meditations on listening, hearing, and being present.
Best known for painting the official portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama that hangs in the National Gallery, artist Amy Sherald’s painting of Breonna Taylor officially goes on display Friday at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C.
Sherald’s posthumous painting of Taylor, now part of the museum’s new exhibition, “Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience,” was first seen en masse by the public when it graced the September 2020 cover of Vanity Fair.
Acclaimed for her photo-based, realistic, minimalist style and creative exploration of skin tone, Sherald’s vision of Taylor simultaneously honors the police violence victim’s beauty, humanity and the tragedy of her loss.
A painting of Taylor now hangs in a darkened gallery on the fourth floor of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It is displayed behind glass, in the warm glow of soft light. It is the only artwork in the room, a commanding presence, and the heartbreaking apex opening Friday.
The painting was acquired by both NMHAAC and the Speed Art Museum in KY, where it was displayed in April of this year. It will hang at NMHAAC until May 2022.
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame has created a special exhibit honoring the late Kobe Bryant, a 2020 Hall of Fame inductee, that has been co-designed and approved by his wife and widow, Vanessa Bryant.
According to the Hall of Fame’s President and CEO, John Doleva, the Bryant exhibit is predicted to become the “most talked about” exhibit inside the Springfield, Massachusetts landmark.
“The family had time to think about what they wanted to do,” Doleva said [as reported by espn.com] during Friday’s news conference for each of the 2020 inductees. “[It’s] about Kobe’s accomplishments but also about what Kobe was after he left the Lakers, after he left basketball.”
The Kobe Bryant exhibit at the Hall of Fame, designed by Vanessa Bryant.
Vanessa Bryant and her oldest daughter, Natalia, accepted Bryant’s Hall of Fame blazer on his behalf and joined the other 2020 inductees at Friday night’s Hall of Fame awards tipoff celebration and awards gala.
NBA Legend Michael Jordan, at the request of Vanessa Bryant, will introduce Kobe Bryant into the Hall this Sunday. Other members of the star-studded 2020 class that will be inducted include Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett.
The Tuskegee Airmen National Museum, which honors the legacy and achievements of the nation’s first all-Black air fighter squadron, has moved to the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.
Housed in the Coleman A. Young Gallery – named after Detroit’s first Black mayor who was himself a second lieutenant, bombardier and navigator in the Tuskegee Airmen.
A virtual grand opening is scheduled for March 22 – 80 years after the squadron’s activation by President Franklin Roosevelt.
“As we observe the 80th anniversary of the Tuskegee Airmen, we honor their courage, remember their sacrifice, and celebrate their amazing feats and contributions,” said Brian Smith, president of the Tuskegee Airmen National Museum.
The grand opening will include a ribbon-cutting, virtual tour and remarks by Airmen Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr. and Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson. The Detroit Youth Choir will perform a special rendition of the Tuskegee Airmen fight song (see below):
Sonya Clark: Tatter, Bristle, and Mendwill be on view at the National Museum of Womeninthe Arts (NMWA) in Washington D.C. today, March 3 through May 31, 2021. Confronting themes of race, visibility and Blackness, it is the first museum survey of the acclaimed textile and social practice artist’s 25-year career, exploring the social and cultural impacts of the African diaspora.
The exhibition will feature nearly 100 works, including Clark’s sculptures made from pocket combs, human hair and thread as well as works from flags, currency, beads, sugar, cotton plants, pencils, books and more.
(Sonya Clark (b. 1967); Photo by Nicholas Calcott)
The artist changes these everyday objects with a vast range of techniques: she weaves, stitches, folds, braids, dyes, pulls, twists, presses, snips or ties within each work. By stitching black thread cornrows and Bantu knots onto fabrics, rolling human hair into necklaces and stringing a violin bow with a dreadlock, Clark manifests ancestral bonds and reasserts the Black presence in histories from which it has been pointedly omitted.
Throughout her 25-year career, Clark has become renowned for her application of fiber art techniques to human hair, combs, currency, hair salon chairs and other everyday materials to explore the social and cultural impacts of the African Diaspora.
The exhibition features nearly 100 works that reflect the breadth and depth of the artist’s practice. Illuminating the central themes of Clark’s art—including heritage, labor, language and visibility—the show aims to reveal Clark’s radical ability to combine an intensity of handwork and subject matter with an economy of form.
“This timely exhibition affirms Clark’s prowess as both maker and visionary,” said NMWA Deputy Director for Art, Programs and Public Engagement/Chief Curator Kathryn Wat. “She uses concept, process and participation rather than didactic imagery to reflect questions and truths back to us.”
Clark describes “mining” common objects, particularly those bound to identity and power, because “they have the mysterious ability to reflect or absorb us.” The artist transmutes these objects through the application of a vast range of fiber-based processes: weaving, folding, braiding, trimming, pulling, rubbing, twisting, pressing, snipping, dyeing, tying or stacking her diverse source materials.
By stitching black thread cornrows and Bantu knots onto flags, rolling human hair into necklaces, or stringing a violin bow with a dreadlock, she reasserts the Black presence in histories from which it has been pointedly omitted.
For example, Clark’s Afro Abe II (2010)—a five-dollar bill embellished with black threads that form an Afro for President Abraham Lincoln—is witty, poignant and provocative. The stitched intervention induces a sharp, penetrating moment of recognition and connection and infuses the currency with new, layered meaning.
Clark’s use of currency-as-canvas evokes personal, cultural and historical associations with money, including freedom, self-determination and property ownership. As Clark observes, “It’s crowning the emancipator with the hair most associated with Black liberation and black power,” simultaneously embodying the historical absence of Black political agency as well as the promise of it. That liminality—the creation of objects that simultaneously denote humankind’s capacity to suppress as well as persevere—is the formidable essence of Clark’s practice.
About Sonya Clark
Born in 1967 in Washington, D.C., Sonya Clark is professor of art and the history of art at Amherst College, and formerly a Distinguished Research Fellow in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. She earned an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also holds a BA from Amherst College, from which she received an honorary doctorate in 2015. She is the recipient of the Rappaport Prize, James Renwick Alliance Distinguished Educator Award, United States Artists Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman Award, ArtPrize Juried Grand Prize, Pollock Krasner Foundation award and The 1858 Prize, among others. Clark is one of 16 international artists selected to participate in the inaugural Black Rock Senegal residency program (2020) in Dakar, a project launched by artist Kehinde Wiley. Clark’s art has been presented in more than 350 museums and galleries around the world and reviewed in publications including Artforum, The Art Newspaper, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.
[Image: Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola: Magic City installation (detail) at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2021.]
A Cadillac Escalade that morphs into a pulsating sound sculpture. Murray’s Pomade cans as minimalist totems. Durags that replace oil paint as a medium for creating monumentally-scaled action paintings.
Nigerian-American artist Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola examines Black culture through his beautifully innovative, thought-provokingMagic City exhibit. And we are here for it!
[Image: Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola: Magic City installation (detail) at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2021.]Conceived as a modern-day sanctuary, the site-specific installation explores the commodification of Black culture and the relationship between Africa and Black America. Magic City marks the 29-year-old artist’s first major solo museum exhibition.
The evocative nature of objects is at the core of Magic City. In Akinbola’s mystical space, mass-produced and readymade materials—specifically those with cultural currency in the Black community—are transformed into animistic power objects that communicate the complexities of identity.
West, who is also a contributor to GBN (check out his prolific and eclectic Music Monday playlists on this site), recently did a Q&A with us to share more insight into the process and journey that led to his drawings and the upcoming exhibit:
Links to all of these sources and more are provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on 
Acclaimed for her photo-based, realistic, minimalist style and creative exploration of skin tone, Sherald’s vision of Taylor simultaneously honors the police violence victim’s beauty, humanity and the tragedy of her loss.
