Abstract
Elora (formally titled, Crown) is a photo from my senior thesis project, The Future Past of Now questions what the African diaspora would look like today if a natural synthesis had occurred instead of the forced enslavement and forced assimilation of people of color through the Atlantic slave trade. What traditions would we have kept and how would we have blended those traditions with other cultures? What would our fashions, our hairstyles, our spiritual practices be? What would we be like if we did not have to contend with the sense of loss that we feel from having been disconnected from our ancestral home and traditions?
To imagine the answers to these questions, I am blending pre-colonial and post-colonial cultural traditions of native people across continents through portraiture and a method of hand coloring black and white silver gelatin prints of analog photos taken with a large format 4x5 monorail camera. This method allows me to layer the mixing of present and past to play with a sense of time that creates an alternate historical timeline.
My project also serves as an allegory of revisionism reworking denigrating ideas of people of color into images both common and resplendent. The work aims to not only transform images of black people but also the functionality of those images in the healing of a people trying to move on without the apology that may never be given but is undoubtedly deserved.
Elora is an example of this as it displays an absence of conflict with the cotton plant as a reminder of the atrocities of slavery and instead displays it as a beautiful jewel appropriate for formal wear. Elora means God gave laurel, the crown of victory. Elora also highlights the Afro as an elegant hairstyle instead of being unkempt as it is often regarded.
My research for The Future Past of Now consists of the reading of numerous books, essays, and peer reviewed articles on the topics of pre-colonial migration patterns, religion, religious syncretism, mythology, sociology, and decolonization, Pan Africanism, and Afrofuturism. I utilize resources such as African fashions, African arts, cultural magazines, social media pages, and musical productions such as Beyoncé’s Black Is King. I also study the works of various artist and writers such as (but not limited to) Kwame Brathwaite, Woodrow Nash, Octavia Butler, Dr. Fahamu Pecou, Nadin Ijewere, Heather Agyepong, and Fabiola Jean-Louis, and Ytasha L. Womack
In my research I have come across common misconceptions about what we lost through the Atlantic slave trade and what we kept. In the next phase of my project, I will be focusing on what we kept.
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