Blackface: A Reclamation of Beauty, Power, and Narrative April 20 – June 15, 2019 Exhibition Essay - Black Face: It Ain’t About the Cork by Halima Taha Blackface: It Ain’t About the Cork c 2019 Halima Taha Galeriemyrtis.net/blackface Black Face: It Ain’t About the Cork Currently ‘blackface’ has been used to describe a white adult performing a nauseatingly racist caricature of a black person; to a pair of pre-teen girls who never heard the word ‘minstrelsy’ when experimenting with costume makeup at a sleep over-- yet ‘blackfaced’ faces continue to be unsettling. Since the 19th century a montage of caricaturized images of black and brown faces, from movies, books, cartoons and posters have been ever present in the memories of all American children. Images of the coon, mammy, buck, sambo, pick-a-ninny and blackface characters, portrayed in subservient roles and mocking caricatures include images from Aunt Jemima at breakfast, to the1930’s Little Rascals, Shirley Temple in The Littlest Rebel, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in blackface on Saturday morning TV; to Uncle Ben staring from the cupboard-- all reinforced the demeaning representations of African Americans created to promote American white supremacy. The promotion of this ideal perpetuates the systemic suppression and suffocation of the black being. For many African Americans these images of themselves evoke an arc of emotions including: anger, sadness confusion, hurt--invisibility and shame. In 1830 Thomas Dartmouth Rice known as the “Father of Minstrelsy” developed a character named Jim Crow after watching enslaved Africans and their descendants reenacting African storytelling traditions that included folktales about tricksters, usually in the form of animals. A Yoruba tale about a crow named Jim was a favorite story that helped people to cope with enslavement. Thomas Darmouth Rice burnt cork to blacken his face and renamed the story’s character ‘Jim Crow’. He embellished quick dance moves, exaggerated African American vernacular and buffoonish behavior. He ‘racialized’ song and dance simultaneous to propelling his theatrical career. Since then, these images and characters have become central to American entertainment. Confounded, despite America’s historic civil rights advances, inclusive of the nation electing Barak Obama as the first African American two term President American society continues to be plagued by racist symbols such as ‘blackface’ and other ethnic stereotyping. The specific characteristics that define minstrelsy are skewed behaviors which include exotica, primitivism absurdity irreverence and recklessness. Music scholar Jon W. Finson further distills minstrelsy as being ‘carnivalesque ‘and longing for an ideal rural paradise’.1 This paradise inverts societal norms and has given writers and performers license to deviate from the wholesome messages of rich cultural traditions, and act as propaganda to pervert Black culture. The primary issue with the ‘blackface’ stereotype, is how these derogatory images are relied upon over generations, where white people think it is okay and black people continue to see themselves 1 Finson, Jon W. The Voices that are Gone: Themes in Nineteenth-century American popular song. / John W. Finson. N.P.:New Yoerk: Oxford University Press, 1994.,1994. University of South Florida Libraries Catalog, EBSCOhost (accessed August 14, 2012 Blackface: It Ain’t About the Cork c 2019 Halima Taha Galeriemyrtis.net/blackface through the lens of racist propaganda designed for a befuddled white America to enjoy the illusion of white privilege and superiority. Examples of contemporary comfort with derogatory images of black people include racially charged items politely marketed as Black Memorabilia:‘ Jolly Nigger’ banks to Mammy kitchenware continue to be manufactured and sold, and not sold exclusively to white people, but also to an increasing population of black people who collect this ‘imposed upon cultural history’. For some, the need to preserve even the most contemptible examples of American culture is to take control of relics from the Middle Passage, colonialism, the Civil War, reconstruction, Jim Crow, two world wars, the depression and the civil rights movement. For others, they collect to be reminded of how white America perceives them - no matter how high you climb the corporate ladder, there are many Americans who still see you as ‘that nigga’, ‘that jiggaboo’ and ‘that coon’. Recently Megyn Kelly, former NBC news anchor, advocated that “it is okay to paint your face black, so long as it is for Halloween’ and when Governor Ralph Northam,’s Virginia medical school yearbook resurfaced depicting two costumed men, one wearing blackface and the other wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit, he admitted that he ‘knows how difficult it is to remove shoe polish” off his face. This sadly shows how entrenched these disparaging images are and they continue to be woven into the fabric of American social life to the point they are perceived as acceptable. Perhaps the most insidious reflection of how ‘cool’ blackface can make some white people feel, is Jimmy Fallon impersonating Chris Rock in blackface; Jimmy Kimmel impersonating Karl Malone and Oprah Winfrey in blackface; and SNL’s Fred Armisen impersonating President Obama in blackface. The fact that blackface emerged as an early form of vaudevillian comedy does not give popular comedians a pass for not distinguishing the difference between ‘blackface’ and impersonation under the guise of comedy. And let’s not talk about white actors stealing work from black actors, like Micheal Gambon did in 1990 playing Shakespeare’s Othello in ‘blackface’ conveniently in an obscure seaside theatre in England – good old Dumbledore. Do middle aged white actors really need to steal work from black actors when there is a history of brilliance in Ira Aldridge, Paul Robeson, Paul Harris, Eamon Walker and Wayne T. Carr playing Othello, with the eloquence of Shakespeare’s language? Clearly, as America’s longest running form of popular entertainment, minstrelsy captures the story of American racism that reduces individuals to ethnically defined stereotypes. How cool is that? The mental pendulum swings from contemporary contexts, to the ghost of blackface past. Most people of African descent throughout the world want to rid themselves and their families from the mask of a degrading history. Blackface: A Reclamation of Beauty, Power and Narrative attempts to assert the beauty of the black body while affirming its power against societal norms, mores and contextual histories. Curators, Myrtis Bedolla and Jessica Stafford Davis offer a ‘counter narrative to the racist archetypes that evolved from the 18th century minstrelsy, and its negative stereotyping of African Americans that prevail today’ through the work of Tawny Chatmon, Alfred Conteh, Jerrell Gibbs, Jas Knight, Arnie Smith, Felandus Thames, and filmmaker Karina Smith. Together they examine portraiture and identity, conscious of the history of ‘blackface’, choosing to reference it or deliberately disregard it. Blackface: It Ain’t About the Cork c 2019 Halima Taha Galeriemyrtis.net/blackface Collectively, these artists are self –taught, academically trained, male, female, emerging, and mid career. One is a photographer, five are painters, one is a filmmaker and another a multimedia artist. The geographical perspectives are national, international, west coast, east coast, southern, northern, Midwestern, single, married and parental. These disparate perspectives reinforce that black people are not a monolithic group with the same worldview and certainly not artists with the same aesthetic or message. Collectively they are committed to making strong visual statements that challenge, and engage diverse audiences to pause, reflect and consider black identity and beauty through the prism of their narratives: Tawny Chatman’s work celebrates the beauty of black childhood, maternal relationships and familial bonds. Her repositioning of Black faces is directly inspired by Western influences she saw in museums while she was raised on three continents. She has a particular interest in 15th -19th century portraiture with an aesthetic focus on Vienna Secession and Pre -Raphaelite periods. The captivating aesthetic behind her portraiture is gleaned from digitally manipulating her subjects and combining paint, gilding and digital collage. In the tradition of James Vanderzee’s early 20th century Harlem portraits, she shares his commitment to ‘portraying the subject in the best possible light’, excluding stereotypes. Chatman’s use of portraiture reaffirms Redemption: Girl un joie de vivre for infinite possibilities in a world full of adventure and Enlightened mystery. In the words of Walt Disney, “ You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” Chatmon’s work does exactly that. Alfred Conteh’s work captures the allure, strength, and authenticity within Georgia’s urban landscape where Black people are often overlooked, misjudged and forgotten. This is due to the focus on the relatively recent growth in black wealth and celebrity in Atlanta. His work seizes the psycho-emotional tension of being disenfranchised by a socio-political infrastructure where opportunities are lacking or hard working people are still struggling to make ends meet. Conteh reimagines portraiture with images that reflect the human spirit through dignity that is captured by the natural gestures of his subjects. He integrates the immediacy