Photo provided by ArtSpace.
“Black Orpheus” by Jacolby Satterwhite.
On the day after she received her MFA in sculpture from Yale, Kenya Robinson looked up at a ten-foot tall black cyborg.
It presented a single Amazonian breast, a Star Wars helmet, a figure like Wonder Woman or Barbie.
Not to mention a right nipple, and genitals, and three cell-phone size monitors showing footage of choreographic superheroes performing martial arts on the seashore while getting rained on by silver crystals.
Welcome to ‘Toonskin, the challenging new show at ArtSpace. Robinson has curated an exhibition to explore images of blackness in cartoons, comics, graphic novels, aka “sequential art.”
“Julian’s Balls” by Kara Combie.
The show runs through June 30. It shows the work of 18 artists.
Many of the artists, like the cyborg’s creator, Jacolby Satterwhite, use new technology.
“Black Man Go Home,” poster and paint, by Jabari Anderson.
Others artists like Jabari Anderson ironically rework old-fashioned technologies like movie posters of blaxploitation films.
Robinson’s show throws a wide cerebral net in exploring how American figures and cultural gestures often derive from African-American and African roots: Bugs Bunny owes a debt of heritage to Br’er Rabbit. Mickey Mouse was created during the era when minstrel shows were still fresh in the public’s entertainment mind.
What are the cultural secrets or cues in the very lines of black ink that separate the frames of the comics?
Allan Appel Photo
Curator Robinson with “Black Orpheus.”
Robinson said that question was her initial trigger to do the show. Was there something simply inherent in blackness and whiteness of early comic book art — they were the only two colors used — that suggests how black and white were relating, or failing to do so?
‘The Immortal Uterus,” VHS film and wire, by Jasmine Murrell.
One of my favorite pieces is Jasmine Murrell’s “Immortal Uterus.” If you’ve ever wondered what became of all that VHS tape, wonder no longer.
As it sits like a dark queen in the corner of the exhibition space, Murrell’s piece reminds you that while an anatomical uterus may look nothing like this. That organ exists in a place of darkness — the inside of the body’s level of illumination is something we almost never think about.
“Immortal Uterus” also has something of the stripper or show girl about it, but one who drips and slithers.
Novelist Mat Johnson and Robert Pruitt.
Of course the piece’s name suggests that tape or celluloid may be the mother of more images than anything ever spawned by paper. And yet what has become of VHS tape? What will be the reuse of the digital and of technologies to come?
On Wednesday afternoon Robinson moderated a discussion between graphic novelist Mat Johnson and Robert Pruitt. Pruitt has a piece in the show that is a monitor showing video inside a spray painted cardboard box. The two are collaborating on a new comic together.
Robinson asked them about the blackness between frames in an animated piece: “Is that the chasm you jump over to create motion?”
They talked for a while, recounting how comics inspired them with their alternate worlds. Johnson, the author of an influential graphic novel called Incognegro, said, “Comics taught me a lot about how to tell stories. A lot of novelists don’t know.”
Still they did not quite answer Robinson’s probing question. That was all right with her. Her next move is to keep the space filled with other programming to keep asking and keep talking, she said.