The Shape of Blackness
The Shape of Blackness was a groundbreaking virtual exhibition featuring Black artists from South Africa and Oakland, California comparing their perspective on Blackness, Race, and Identity in 2021.
PROBLEM ANALYSIS
There are multiple issues that an exhibition like SHAPE sought to address; not all are defined as "problems." Racism and anti-Blackness are the central problems; the following are opportunities:
Dedicated space: It is no secret in the visual arts world that artists of African descent have been historically undervalued and overlooked by traditional "high art" institutions such as galleries, museums, and private collectors. SHAPE created a forum specifically for our own self-definition through our own self-expression, where WE are the priority.
Visibility in new modes: The migration to virtual platforms, necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasized how conversations need not end because we can’t be physically present for them. Instead, we can capitalize on the promise of digital spaces to bring us closer together.
Contemporary relevance: When this idea was originally conceived back in April 2020, we had not yet witnessed the latest round of police and vigilante violence exacted on Black lives. These tragedies kicked off a wave of protest activism in the United States and globally perhaps unseen since the late 1960s This in turn reinvigorated the public outcry and movement to address the deep strains of anti-Blackness that have infected Western cultures for centuries. This larger social and political climate enabled SHAPE to make a relevant and timely contribution to the discourse.
Impact
Created by Cedric Brown, The Shape of Blackness exhibition solicited perspectives on the Black experience— past, present, and future— to engage artists in a transnational conversation through visual art. The exhibit featured 11 visual artists, five from South Africa and six from Oakland, who created work in response to the question: “When you look at contemporary Blackness, what do you see?”
Participating artists included Theko Boshomane, Tshepiso Moropa, Lebohang Motaung, Lebo Thoka, and Helena Uambembe from South Africa; and Aaron Beitia, Courageous, Nicole Dixon, Michon Sanders, Brette Sims, and Abba Yahudah from the United States. Brown worked in partnership with curators Trevor Parham of Oakstop, a hyperlocal enterprise and arts space, to select the Oakland artists, and with Johannesburg-based Odysseus Shirindza to select the South African artists.
“SHAPE provides an opportunity to delve into a conversation, in a nuanced way through visual art, to change negative perceptions that are ingrained in our communities, whether on the Continent or in the Diaspora.” Shirindza said at the time. “SHAPE redirects that thinking and recreates positive images about Blackness and interconnectedness and Black people globally.”
The co-producers hosted the show on Exhibbit, a virtual gallery platform that provided a 3D art gallery environment that allowed any user, from anywhere in the world, to move around the gallery space to view artwork, read artist statements, and learn more about the art or artists through the SHAPE website. SHAPE also offered viewers a chance to respond to the exhibit and join the conversation via comments on the SHAPE website. The conversation coincided with a slew of charged events in 2020 and 2021, spanning the impact of the pandemic on Black communities to violence and murder at the hands of police officers.
“Events in the last year put race-based inequality squarely in the global spotlight,” said Parham before the exhibition’s launch. “We're finally being seen and heard in ways that we haven't in a long time, both by our own people and by the rest of the world. SHAPE addresses this contemporary Black interpretive experience, which is needed, useful, and of interest in this virtuous and vicious cycle of heightened awareness.”
In choosing South Africa and the US, SHAPE sought perspectives and a dialogue from the global north and south, Black majority and Black “minority” nations with similar historical contexts— the rise from the boot heel of anti-Black state oppression, and an historical transAtlantic alliance throughout Civil Rights/Black Power and anti-Apartheid resistance movements; the presence of immigrant populations from elsewhere in the diaspora and the occasional accompanying tensions between “us” and “them”; and the continued undermining of Black progress due to persistent inequities and discrimination, regardless of the skin color of the perpetrator.
“Our historical contexts are different, but the impacts of deep and violent anti-Blackness are all too alike, said Brown. “Black Americans and South Africans stand to learn from and be motivated by each other, especially via the brilliant cultures that each have created, even in the face of suboptimal conditions. SHAPE is just one illustration of that richness.”
SHAPE embraced the then-necessary reliance on virtual platforms to take advantage of social distancing and engage artists/audiences across the globe during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. As such, it was one of the first-ever art exhibitions (if not the only) to engage Black artists from different continents in a virtual gallery format that bridged distant geographies for an opportunity to unite in conversation.
In reflecting on the personal impact of conceiving and producing the exhibition, Brown shared that “...at my first [AFRE] fellows’ convening in Magaliesburg, I created a vision of myself as a cultural activist, creating an arts space dedicated to ‘[lifting] up our beauty, our genius, our herstories and histories borne of perseverance and the triumph over pain...serving to nourish and affirm African-descended people.’ SHAPE was a first step in that direction.”
“Since I had not previously worked in an arts space, my primary SHAPE goal was to gain solid knowledge of considerations and logistics necessary to host a successful visual art exhibition--a logical starting point.”
“Given that baseline, I was indeed able to achieve my intended impact, as I benefited from the kind of rich hands-on experience that enabled me to learn quickly, and to contribute to a diaspora-broad conversation about the relevance, importance, and evolution of Black identities. And to begin planning for my next adventure in the diasporic arts.”
