It is Pride Month! ANA recommends books by 5 African queer artists and writers. These books are a testament to how people in queer communities are navigating their lives in a homophobic society. From visual artists to art historians, art writers, and activists, these books explore how the queer community makes space for each other as they emote and celebrate in the face of an unaccepting world.
Overview:
Brett Charles Seiler‘s work has elements of painting, installation, and object art, with a strong emphasis on text and language. Sometimes poetic, nostalgic, or romantic, it is an integral part of his art or stands on its own as a piece as well. In his paintings, the space is indeterminate, the figures are not located and are sketchily fleeting, and the writing elements seem spontaneous like statements from street art. The colour scheme moves in a narrow spectrum between black, grey, white and brown tones, often using wood. His themes are sexual interaction, oppression, homosexuality, gender, and men. Originally from Zimbabwe, a state where human rights violations are commonplace, his work also makes a mark in the struggle for equal sexual orientation in education, media, and institutions.
Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness by Zanele Muholi
Overview:
The book features over ninety of Muholi’s evocative self-portraits, each image drafted from material props in Muholi’s immediate environment. A powerfully arresting collection of work, Muholi’s radical statements of identity, race, and resistance are a direct response to contemporary and historical racism.
Zanele Muholi says:
“I am producing this photographic document to encourage individuals in my community to be brave enough to occupy spaces―brave enough to create without fear of being vilified. . . . To teach people about our history, to rethink what history is all about, to reclaim it for ourselves―to encourage people to use artistic tools such as cameras as weapons to fight back.”
Photographs by Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Alex Hirst & Mark Sealy
Overview:
The photographs Rotimi Fani-Kayode made in collaboration with his partner Alex Hirst are a profound narrative of sexual and cultural difference, seminal in their exploration of the politics of desire, diaspora, displacement, spirituality, and the black male body.
Together, they created a photographic world in which the body is the focal point for an exploration of the relationship between erotic fantasy and ancestral spiritual values. Through a strong use of symbolism – often derived from Fani-Kayode’s Nigerian culture – and vigorous use of colour and dramatic lighting, the work addressed many interlinked themes ambiguous and open-ended in their meanings and interpretations.
Published posthumously, this book documents Fani-Kayode and Hirst’s intensively productive collaborations, which spanned a mere six years from 1983 to 1989, when Fani-Kayode died aged 34. It was published in 1996, with texts by Kobena Mercer, Simon Njami, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Alex Hirst, Jean Loup Pivin & Derek Bishton.
Ajamu Artist Newspaper: The Patron Saint of Darkrooms by Ajamu X
Overview:
For more than 30 years, Ajamu has unapologetically celebrated black queer bodies, the erotic sense and pleasure as activism. He has been at the forefront of genderqueer photography, challenging dominant ideas around masculinity, gender, sexuality and representation of black LGBTQ+ people in the United Kingdom.
Published to accompany Ajamu’s new exhibition The Patron Saint of Darkrooms at Autograph, this beautifully produced newspaper features photographs by the artist and debuts his commission responding to the legacy of black queer photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode. New texts reflect on Ajamu’s work, including Black Trans Masculinities by Edwin Coomasaru, Pleasure for Pleasure’s Sake – Black Queer Erotica in the Archive by Jason Okundaye, and Out of the Darkroom and into an Infinite Possibility by Bindi Vora.
