“Reading the wrong book is almost worse than not reading any book at all.”
-Witchcraft For Wayward Girls
Artist: Adenuga John Opeyemi
“Mental Pabulum”
All articles filed in African Artist
Think Of Them Like The Jews
“Somebody was reading a novel about the Nigerian-Biafran war and said, ‘It’s really fascinating, but honestly I’m still a bit confused about why the Igbo people were massacred?’ And I said that to understand Igbo people in Nigeria, think of them like the Jews. People say don’t trust Igbo people because they want to control everything and they love money and they’re too pushy.”
-Dream Count
Via: TikTok
Black Men Wearing Flower Crowns
Seeing black men depicted with flower crowns is important and multivalent. For one, they’re perpetuated as aggressive criminals. Simply wearing a hoodie, or retrieving their phones from a pocket is enough for law enforcement to feel threatened, pull a gun and take their lives.
Piggybacking off my initial point, they are dehumanized due to stereotypes of criminality. As if they don’t feel, bleed, experience heartbreak, have aspirations that are curtailed by systemic racism. Mind you, we were imported here and enslaved, it’s the white man who should elicit such fear. Having spread their fallacy of supremacy globally, oppressing everyone, taking what isn’t theirs through genocide, murder, rape.
Finally, it combats toxic masculinity. They’re often pigeonholed into hypermasculine boxes and aren’t given room to breathe, to exist as a unique, singular being. This kind of representation matters, allowing them to be soft. Everyone deserves such grace. To cry instead of bottle up feelings by being told to man up. Resulting in uncontrolled rage when conditions get overwhelming. Which painting is your favorite? Why? Artist: Moses Zibor
“Journey Through Words”
“Knowledge is a kind of power, and the knowledge you find in this book will help you find power inside yourself.
Power is not a material possession that can be given. Power is the ability to act and that must always be taken, for no one will ever give that power to you.
Those who have power wish to keep it, and those who want power must learn to take it.”
-Witchcraft For Wayward Girls
Artist: Olamide Ogunade Olisco
Flashback Friday: Inappropriately High
When you return to class from free period stoned af, sans eye drops, trying to play it cool. Only for the teacher to single you out and ask why your eyes are red. Raise your hand if you’ve been there. Artist: Kwesi Botchway
Metamorphosis By Ian Mwesiga
Ugandan artist Ian Mwesiga’s work is rooted in the human psyche, his own and that of his subjects. Using windows in many of his pieces as a gateway into their lives. The proportions and placement of his characters within their landscape, reveal their psychological world to the viewer. Or rather it makes you question what that is. You can’t help but wonder what his characters are thinking (the nearly naked woman in painting two, the man by the pool in painting four, his inner world magnified by his reflection in the water, as well as his shadow), looking at (specifically the young women in paintings three and eight, using lenses via the camera with the man in painting two, or sunglasses, the woman in painting seven to enhance audience curiosity), or feel.
Finding inspiration in historical black and white photos (his creations mirroring his creative process in painting one), his pieces are a “negotiation between the future and the past.” In more ways than one, as we’re left to wonder where did these people come from, where are they going?
Mwesiga’s regards his work as a metamorphosis via introspection, “why am I doing this, why is it important?” As an exercise in self-questioning he use to paint portraits blindfolded to answer said questions, by seeing what emerges from within.
A brilliant, erudite artist who uses moody colors as an homage to oil painting masters before him, and to complement the dark skin of his figures. Everything is conscientious, created with purpose. Phenomenal. Which piece is your favorite? Artist: Ian Mwesiga
Dangerous Women Enjoy Sex For Pleasure
“Women have sex for intimacy. Men have sex for pleasure. That’s what culture tells us. The idea that I’d be shown to enjoy my body, to desire the male form just as strongly as I was desired, to show a woman putting her own physical pleasure at the forefront…it felt daring.
I liked the idea of showing a woman having sex because she wanted to be pleased instead of being desperate to please.”
*I keep telling y’all, find your g-spot, set yourself free:
https://sainttwenty.com/2020/03/03/i-have-sex-like-a-man/
https://sainttwenty.com/2022/01/10/patriarchy-keep-women-leashed/
Artist: Matthew Eguavoen