Safiyah Cheatam

Feb 28

Golden Record: Take Two

Suldano Abdiruhman is a Somali-American, Philadelphia-based design and textile artist. As the great-granddaughter of weavers and artists, Abdiruhman uses the freedom of fibers to be inclusive of all of her interdisciplinary interests including sculpture, painting, and performance. …

Science Fiction

2 min read

Jun 24, 2021

On Perception: Reality and Approaching Renewal

This essay combines the thoughts of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, Jean Baudrillard’s The Precession of the Simulacra, and Rebecca Solnit’s The Annihilation of Time and Space to examine how humans have evolved to perceive space-time in regard to the industrial revolution(s); semiotics and iconology; and simulation-based media. Originally written…

Perception

10 min read

Jun 24, 2021

A Black Space

This essay surveys Towson University’s Center for the Arts Spring 2017 Dark Humor exhibition featuring artists Joyce J. Scott and Peter Williams in addition to situating Radcliffe Bailey’s 2008–2011 installation Windward Coast within the fold of Afrofuturism by way of guest lecturer Nikki A. Greene. Originally written March 14, 2017 …

Peter Williams

6 min read

Published in The Drinking Gourd

·Jul 31, 2020

Making a Case for W.E.B. Du Bois as a Proto-Afrofuturist

Du Bois encompasses both the mundane and the fantastical aspects of Afrofuturism in the praxis of his life’s work. — The term Afrofuturism evokes a stellar litany: musicians Sun Ra and George Clinton along with novelists Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delany. While in its early 1990’s debut, Afrofuturism was predominantly in the literary sphere, Afrofuturism’s mid-2000’s resurgence has shifted to the visual arts. Today, elements of Afrofuturism surface in…

Afrofuturism

11 min read

Making a Case for W.E.B. Du Bois as a Proto Afrofuturist