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This article explores the impact of Afrocubanismo on the development of Cuba’s arts during the 1940s and 1950s. The article follows the discursive output of artists, intellectuals, and cultural policymakers of different racial backgrounds over the deployment of lo negro to construct cubanidad. It argues that, if the 1920s and 1930s experienced a movement towards the construction of a homogeneous mestizo Cuba, the following decades reveal an effort by some artists to desyncretize lo cubano. While some intellectuals constructed notions of authenticity that circumscribed black art to black artists, many white Cuban artists in turn embraced elite Hispanic heritage as their main creative language while valorizing some Afro-Cuban artists’ recreations of lo negro. The article also demonstrates that the scholarly debates about cultural appropriation in recent decades have a long history within the Afro-Cuban community. It shows how Afro-Cuban artists and intellectuals pioneered arguments about the exploitative use of lo negro to make national art and the central role of culture in shaping racial inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that Langston Hughes's acclaimed short story "The Blues I'm Playing" (1934) offers provocative feminist and queer insights into "Negrotarian" patronage of the early twentieth century. Against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance, the discussion sets out to define an interracial, intergenerational homoerotics of patronage between the white widowed elder, Mrs. Dora Ellsworth, and young Black pianist, Ms. Oceola Jones. The discussion places in stark relief the patron's erotic competition with her protégée's working-class African American fiancé. The article also grapples with topics like racialized obsession, the role of community in a black artist's self-concept, and the best avenues for interracial solidarity across planes of difference. Understanding mature women's legitimacy as sexual subjects and the persistence of queer loneliness (despite class and race privilege) also come to the fore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the work of two queer Black artists, Richard Bruce Nugent and Marlon Riggs, within the historical and sociopolitical contexts of the Harlem Renaissance and cultural backlash of the late 1980s. Through comparative textual analyses, the author explores fluctuations of Black queer cultural production during the twentieth century and considers how each artist subverts dominant racist and heteronormative ideologies in mainstream society and Black communities. Engaging tools from the fields of critical race theory, queer theory, critical legal studies, and cultural representations of race and sexuality, the author analyzes "Smoke, Lilies and Jade" and Tongues Untied structurally and historically, suggesting that both offer valuable strategies for survival in and resistance against an anti-Black and homophobic society. The works of Nugent and Riggs constitute queer interventions in the larger movement toward racial equality, making visible racial and sexual oppression and positing connections between racial justice and queer liberation. Moreover, positioning Riggs within the legacy of Nugent and the Harlem Renaissance points to the generative potential of radical and transgressive queer Black art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews three comics-related exhibitions held in Chicago, Illinois, including "Chicago: Where Comics Came to Life" from June 19, 2021-January 9, 2022, "Drawn to Combat: Bill Mauldin and the Art of War" from May 14, 2021-April 2, 2022, and "Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now" from June 19-October 3, 2021.

In this article, I explore how a widely celebrated African philosophy of being, Ubuntu, is artistically expressed and imagined. I provide a formative theorisation of Ubuntu aesthetics, or an aesthetics of Ubuntu, through an analysis of selected artworks produced by black artists depicting urban black life in South Africa during the twentieth century. The complicated and polarised experiences of black people who resided in colonial and apartheid cities provide a persuasive case for understanding the creative visualities of Ubuntu. To navigate the segregation of the colonial and apartheid city, black people adopted forms of existence that obscured and questioned the centrality of Ubuntu as part of the modern African experience. Nevertheless, equally undeniable is that the characteristics of the artworks created by black artists who captured and documented urban black life throughout the previous century were some of the most salient aesthetic embodiments of Ubuntu at work. In the main, I argue that the creative choices and visual languages adopted by the black artists discussed here are imbued with an Ubuntu sensibility or an Ubuntu aesthetics that reveals the nuance of humanity among urbanised black people. I also discuss an artwork that complicates the performance of Ubuntu in the urban context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Courtesy Collection Musée d'Art Haitien The formation of new art institutions marked the Brazilian art system after World War II: from the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), created in 1947, to the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM) and Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM Rio), both from 1948. In Mexico City, Martins visited Carrillo Gil and Mexican President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, to inform them of the Bienal's major interest in receiving Mexico's national representation. However, months before the Bienal's inauguration, Profili and Carrillo Gil discussed the apprehension of some of the artists with regards to political issues, which the former tried to dismiss on the pretext of misinformation circulating in the art world. In this context, the conception of the Bienal de São Paulo by the MAM in 1951 constituted an important milestone in the relationship between emerging local Brazilian art networks and the international art scene. [Extracted from the article]

Based on hemerographic and bibliographic research, this article discusses the artistic trajectory of the comic actor-singer-dancer Martinho Corrêa Vasques (1822-1890), in the period between 1841 and 1875, since his entry into João Caetano's dramatic company, with which he performed in theatrical shows in benefit of enslaved manumission and Catholic brotherhoods of blacks and poor free men in the 1840s, until the longest period of the artist's career, when he worked in the imperial capital and in the provinces of Rio Grande, São Paulo, Pernambuco and Bahia. The article reveals the fundamental characteristics of Martinho Corrêa Vasques' style, highlighting the important role of co-authorship played by the artist in the scenic-musical performance of the lundus, arias, vaudevilles and parodies, in addition to revealing sociopolitical and ethnic implications of the performance of the black artist on nineteenthcentury stages, during the slavery regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the one side, denying Tom's invitation could get Jim labeled as uppity or uncooperative at best and subject Jim to fatal violence at worst. How much of that history did the actor playing Jim have to ignore to "play the truth of the scene?" Usually, Tennessee Williams is not my preferred fare, but my Black roommate was playing the role of Jim, Laura's gentleman caller. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Iluminuras is the property of Revista Iluminuras and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Arte & Ensaio is the property of Arte & Ensaio and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Arte & Ensaio is the property of Arte & Ensaio and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Arte & Ensaio is the property of Arte & Ensaio and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Arte & Ensaio is the property of Arte & Ensaio and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Arte & Ensaio is the property of Arte & Ensaio and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Review of: Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way, Caseen Gaines (2021) Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 448 pp., ISBN 978-1-49268-881-9, 978-1-49268-881-5, h/bk, $26.99 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2009 Ontario Ministry's Equity and Inclusive Education strategy called for the implementation of culturally responsive pedagogy across the board, the voice of the Black creative and content in arts curriculum remains invisible. This primary research centers on the perspectives of African, Caribbean, and Black artists called on for the first time to discuss the successes and challenges of teaching culturally responsive arts in diverse Ontario classrooms. This qualitative study uses critical race theory to examine their experiences of working in Greater Toronto schools and surrounding areas in Ontario, Canada. Using cultural arts from across the African diaspora as a tool, their artistic work is situated within culturally relevant pedagogy, which is an alternative approach to centering on identity, cultural frames of reference, and critical student learning. Yet, as these Black Canadian artists garner successful impacts from culturally responsive teaching in classroom space, they identify simultaneous challenges of institutional unpreparedness, anti-Black racism, cultural appropriation, and legitimizing their cultural artistry to school administration. Semi-structured interviews include rich narratives from artists specializing in contemporary and traditional expressions of orality, visual arts, dance, and drumming/percussion from the African diaspora. While navigating instances of unbelonging, recommendations are proposed to improve the understanding of the artists' role and improve Canadian educational institutions' relationship with Black creatives in inclusive education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this piece, we take up haunting as a spatial method to consider what geography can learn from ghosts. Following Avery Gordon's theorizations of haunting as a sociological method, a consideration of the spectral offers a means of reckoning with the shadows of social life that are not always readily apparent. Drawing upon art installations in Brooklyn, NY, White Shoes (2012–2016), and Oakland, CA, House/Full of BlackWomen (2015–present), we find that in both installations, Black women artists perform hauntings, threading geographies of race, sex, and speculation across past and present. We observe how these installations operate through spectacle, embodiment, and temporal disjuncture, illuminating how Black life and labor have been central to the construction of property and urban space in the United States. In what follows, we explore the following questions: what does haunting reveal about the relationship between property, personhood, and the urban in a time of racial banishment? And the second, how might we think of haunting as a mode of refusing displacement, banishment, and archival erasure as a way of imagining "livable" urban futures in which Black life is neither static nor obsolete? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores positional artistic and curatorial motivations for ethical collaborative work in the context of contemporary arts and social justice. Case studies include exhibition installations in settler institutions that challenge dominant, monolithic representations of what "belonging" means in contested sites like Canada. In doing so, this ongoing work between white settler curator and Black queer artist reflects on some of the decolonizing possibilities and limitations of critical cross-cultural collaboration and exhibition-making over time and across space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here I examine the research, drawings, and paintings of the Afro-Brazilian artist Rubem Valentim produced during his trip to Western Europe and Senegal from 1963 to 1966. Valentim's work has recently become a paradigm of Brazilian geometric abstraction. Scholars have largely interpreted the symbolism in his paintings as stemming from African-derived religions in Brazil and as divorced from contemporaneous politics. Building on this literature, I explore the political dimensions and multifaceted articulations of abstraction in Valentim's five notebooks from his trip to Europe, which have only come to light in the past few years and are the foundation of his painting practice. I argue that his study of African and Polynesian objects from the British Museum as well as his abstract notebook drawings highlight his private support of Third-Worldism, which promoted solidarity among countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America in favor of national liberation and against global capitalism. Valentim's time abroad coincided with the April 1964 Brazilian military coup, the regime of which combatted progressive politics like Third-Worldism. While his notebook drawings contain politicized words opposing the dictatorship, the resulting paintings are devoid of them, which qualified them for regime-sponsored exhibitions like the Brazilian display at the 1966 First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, and veiled the artist's private resistance embedded in his geometry. The true intentions of his abstract visual language, revealed in the notebooks, were unintelligible to the regime, making his work a contested landscape of political conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a proposal for workshop-meetings, which were held with black Early Childhood Education teachers, with the aim of mapping their paths of aesthetic training. Structured around the sharing of poetics by black artists, the workshop-meetings were constituted as space-time for autobiographical narratives, in order to support the premise that it is necessary to open space for listening to narratives that affirm singular-plural (re)existences. Issues about ethnic-racial diversity and aesthetic principles in the proposals for Early Childhood Education are articulated and make up the context over which the discussion is woven. The focus is on teacher training, as it is understood that the proposition of pedagogies of diversity, decolonial and reexistence, necessarily passes through teaching and its repertoires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text is a presentation, it is a kind of memorial, a translation of something that must be remembered, facts from when fire sang about my life. The scene of the image is the wreckage of the fire that occurred on March 7, 2016, in apartment 403 of the "Edifício Quitandinha" in the Barbalho district Historic Center, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. [Extracted from the article]

"After it's all said: a conversation" as you will read it in the following is a transmutation -- performed by me, Jess Oliveira -- of a previous live chat among artists and intellectuals Denise Ferreira da Silva, Musa Michelle Mattiuzzi, and Laís Machado on their intellectual-artistic work and how they challenge the modern tradition of critical discourses. I mean, its virtuality, that dimension of the work that refuses, escapes, no matter what is updated, in terms of what the artist does of the original idea, of what its materials and other circumstances make it possible or impossible, or how the audience(s) respond to the work. From the vantage point I see and practice my own work, I understand it as an aesthetic practice made possible by the work(s) of Black women, and that makes other works by Black women possible. Translation, as I practice it, is an act of remembrance and continuation of conversations of and with works done; questions posed and answers gave by Black women and (in) their works, a possibility after it's all said. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Arte & Ensaio is the property of Arte & Ensaio and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)