Akosua Adoma Owusu, White Afro, 2019
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November 2, 2019–February 2, 2020 comedy to romance to horror in a single Black American travelers, specifically a story, with no apparent allegiance to reality perceived policy of exclusion that discour- or formal narrative structure. Owusu adapts aged their entry into the South American these strategies, using quick edits and un- country. Pelourinho, the old historic centre of likely juxtapositions to guide audiences Salvador City, is the location of Owusu’s film through unsettling moments and to express as well as the site in which Spike Lee and AKOSUA ADOMA the cultural anxieties surrounding her own Michael Jackson filmed Jackson’s contro- racial legacy. versial music video “They Don’t Care About Us” (1996). The vestiges of Jackson’s visit At the heart of many endure in the city, his likeness appearing OWUSU: of her works is the in a number of bizarre, kitschy forms, such fraught relationship as an image of a young Jackson protectively between beauty and holding a doll that resembles his post-plas- power. Black hair cul- tic surgery adult self. The film implies, with WELCOME TO ture as an art form in melancholic irony, that there are sinister ex- postcolonial Ghana, ceptions to exclusion, in which a Black per- colorism, and mani- son that aligns more closely with whiteness festations of racial is not only granted permission and access, THE JUNGLE capitalism in the but can be a figure of everlasting celebration. beauty industry are frequent topics, as is the figure of the hair- Oh, this land, this land is your land Film still: Akosua Adoma Owusu, White Afro, 2019. 6:04 mins. dresser and the sub- Ah, this land, this land is my land Courtesy of the artist ject of hairstyling. Of Yeah, this land your land particular interest are This land is your land, this land is my Black Americans negotiating selfhood in the the ways in which the ideology of beauty land From California, well to the face of discrimination and cultural location. centers whiteness and functions as a hege- What cultural loss occurs, when the you and New York Island From the Redwood An identity divided into multiple parts, with monic system of control.Owusu illustrates the me are split in two? Or three? Or four? Forest, to the Gulf Stream waters I tell an impossibility for reconciliation (there is the Black trauma that is a consequence of How do we emerge from a constant weight ya, this land was made for you and me your land and then there is my land). white standards of beauty through a ma- of realizations, of being twice as good, of nipulation of film and a use of imagery and accepting half as much, of not being of here As a member of the first generation in her sound that seem incongruous—darkness can and too much of there? And how do these We begin with how it ends. The artist, spin- family to be born in the United States, coexist with humor on this island, absolute- chasms transform into spaces of becoming? ning in slow motion, her face half-concealed Akosua Adoma Owusu speaks directly to ly—while pointing to the absurdity of these According to Owusu, Blackness is funda- from a long train of microbraids swirling the crisis of heritage and assimilation for power structures. mentally entangled with loss, displacement, around her head. Glowing beaded necklaces African expatriates and their U.S.-born chil- and memory; it is a manifold existence. At lift mid-air, surrounding her body like a tan- dren in her work. She adds a third layer to A lyrical portrait of hair salons in Kumasi, the root of what she identifies as her “war- gle of lights or tracings of a coastline. Du Bois’s consciousness, expanding his defi- Ghana, Me Broni Ba (2009) depicts the ring consciousness” is the anxiety that she is nitions to reflect the tangled legacy of European colonialism in too Ghanaian for America, and too American We hear a forebod- diverse identities of Africa through images of women practicing for Ghana. A life lived on two cracked halves, ing reharmonization African immigrants hair braiding on discarded white baby dolls in constant search of a land she can actually of “Yankee Doodle,” interacting in African, from the West. Unfolding through a series call her own. a slow and ominous white American, and of vignettes, the film is set against a child’s —Kim Nguyen first pour into a grit- Black American cul- story of migrating from Ghana to the United ty, bluesy glass by ture. Although the in- States (we hear it is a cold land, with leaf- Sharon Jones & the ternal pressures and less trees and no bright lights, full of pink The countries that I inhabit spread Dap-Kings. Jones external conflicts as- people with blonde hair). The film uncovers out like stars, in archipelagoes. belts a soulful and in- sociated with double the meaning behind the Akan term of endear- sistent protest, “This consciousness per- ment, me broni ba, an expression that can be —Édouard Glissant, land is your land, sist in Owusu’s third heard when a mother refers to her child, or Traité du Tout-Monde this land is my land... cinematic space, hers even a husband to his wife, acknowledging This land was made integrates what Du their subject of adoration as me broni ba, or for you and me.” This Film still: Akosua Adoma Owusu, Split Ends, I Feel Wonderful, Bois excludes—femi- “my white baby.” Lest we forget, whiteness is 2012. 4:39 mins. Courtesy of the artist land. It was made for nism, queerness, and a continent in which you, and me. immigrant consciousnesses, and all their we all reside. intersections. And it is in this in-between, We know the song is a remake of Woody amongst the archipelagoes, that she creates While Me Broni Ba Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”— which new meaning. is concentrated in was written as a subversive response to Ghana, Split Ends, Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”—a Owusu describes triple consciousness as I Feel Wonderful Marxist anthem often misconstrued as a experienced in: the necessary assimilation (2012) investigates folksy campfire sing- a-long. Jones recorded of the African diaspora to white American the uniqueness of her version in 2004 in the midst of the George culture in order to succeed in American so- hair culture in the W. Bush presidency, restoring verses redact- ciety; the frequent grouping of the African U.S. Based on an ed from the original to reclaim the song’s immigrant with Black Americans in the eyes ABC news report social justice origins. She sings of private of others, mostly due to a shared skin color; from the 1970s about property and wealth disparity and names and the lack of connection of many Africans Afro hair culture in Film still: Akosua Adoma Owusu, Me Broni Ba, 2009. 22:00 mins. cities, states, and neighborhoods with major- with African American culture and history, New York City, Split Courtesy of the artist ity Black populations that have been erased their distinct identities rendered marginal. Ends weaves togeth- from the portrait of this land. Her films are materializations of this frag- er a dense collage of mentary space, where heterogeneity over found footage that references Blaxploitation We listen to her mournful declaration and singularity is currency. The work proposes flicks and kaleidoscopic psychedelia. The we think of the many ways in which we are that to be a we is to recognize a type of col- film is spliced with voiceovers from colo- bound together, to no land, to your land, and lectivity, or multiplicity in existence, one that nial narratives, organic sounds from salon to our land. How we can have one foot on can be simultaneously shared and fractured. environments, and a protest speech on re- this land and one foot on another (and maybe sistance by political activist, author, and even another, or two lands over top of each Combining documentary with personal nar- academic Angela Davis (herself a hair icon other). How once there was a land made for rative, Owusu’s films of the civil rights era). you and me, and then there wasn’t. incorporate a diverse Overlaid with a funk- array of materials, in- tastic soundtrack, We feel the urgency throughout her vocals. cluding reenactments Owusu draws atten- They demand a you follow through on prom- of folklore and scenes tion to both the inher- Akosua Adoma Owusu: Welcome to the Jungle ises made for freedom and for a right to a of daily life, animated ent pride and specific home. A fervent call for us to believe that textiles, archival and displeasure and suf- November 2, 2019–February 2, 2020 those who live in this country are the ones found footage, oral fering associated with This exhibition is organized by CCA Wattis who should determine its destiny. stories and semi- au- grooming Black hair Institute, San Francisco. It is curated by Kim tobiographical experi- that is all too familiar Nguyen and organized by Leila Grothe for the CCA Wattis Institute, and organized by Andrea We recall that at no point do we hear her ences, American pop to the Black diaspora. Andersson, The Helis Foundation Chief Curator utter the word our, and only once we. There culture and advertise- of Visual Arts at the CAC, for the Contemporary is the invitational you and an invitational me, ments, and original The final film in Arts Center, New Orleans. somehow both oppositional and complemen- 16mm and Super-8 Owusu’s hair trilogy, This exhibition is supported by The Helis tary, but always split in two.