THE NEGATION OF HISTORIC EXCLUSIVITY: REWRITING AND LEGITIMIZING BLACKNESS THROUGH NEO-SLAVE PORTRAITURE
Date of Award
May 2019
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
African American Studies
Advisor(s)
Casarae L. Gibson
Second Advisor
James H. Rolling, Jr.
Keywords
Eighteenth-nineteenth century portraiture, Identity Politics, Pan Africanism, Portraiture, Race and Representation, Triple Consciousness
Subject Categories
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
This thesis project examines the cultural politics of legitimizing Blackness in the work of artists within the African, Caribbean, and Latin America diaspora. Through use of the Latin American casta paintings, the Caribbean colonial society paintings, and eighteenth and nineteenth century portraiture, the project examines how Blackness is re-institutionalized and legitimized into contemporary art. I examine how early representations of Blackness has created a standard for the way in which Blackness is controlled and re-institutionalized into a coloniality of power and eurocentrism. Through the works of Firelei Báez, Scherezade Garcia, Harmonia Rosales, Fabiola Jean-Louis, Sonia Boyce, and Beyoncé, we are able to see how each artist impregnates contrastive representations of Black agency through “neo-slave portraiture” within their works.
In the secondary portion of my project, I analyze “neo-slave portraiture” and how in the contemporary moment each artist revisits the legacy of colonialism and slavery within their work by renegotiating representations of Black agency. In doing so, I analyze these works through a method I coined, “neo-slave portraiture”; derived from Ishmael Reed’s 1976 novel Flight to Canada. Using portraiture as a core method within my research, I seek to unveil how contemporary artists, through the use of portraiture, are able to reject racialized “regimes of representation” through the production of their works.
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Recommended Citation
Murray, Kyla Imari, "THE NEGATION OF HISTORIC EXCLUSIVITY: REWRITING AND LEGITIMIZING BLACKNESS THROUGH NEO-SLAVE PORTRAITURE" (2019). Theses - ALL. 318.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/318
