Tales of, and Revelations from Material Culture and Vernacular Arts as Tools of Resistance

Anne Bouie, Independent Scholar

Event Type

Panel Discussion

Location

EHFA 136

Start Date

6-3-2020 1:45 PM

End Date

6-3-2020 3:15 PM

Description

African aesthetics, material culture, vernacular art, beliefs, and technology survived transport to the New World. In particular, Southern African-American art became an "esoteric language," created to resist oppression. This visual language and philosophic stream in the antebellum south finds its corollary in resistance in throughout the African Atlantic, and places North America on the continuum where visual arts become tools of resistance throughout the African Diaspora. The work is a synthesis of interdisciplinary study. First, research outlines presents, and circumscribes the content used to throughout the presentation. Secondly, visual art makes the unseen seen, using encoding, obscurity, assemblage, collage, bricolage, containment and ambiguity. Signs, symbols, codes, composition, marks, colors, and designs, were means of surreptitious, yet public communication of directions, and information to be "read," and "seen," and understood only by the "initiated." Finally, performance art engages, teaches, and inspires and communicates with and on the mental, emotional and spiritual domains.

Comments

Moderator: Eric Crawford, Coastal Carolina University

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Mar 6th, 1:45 PM Mar 6th, 3:15 PM

Tales of, and Revelations from Material Culture and Vernacular Arts as Tools of Resistance

EHFA 136

African aesthetics, material culture, vernacular art, beliefs, and technology survived transport to the New World. In particular, Southern African-American art became an "esoteric language," created to resist oppression. This visual language and philosophic stream in the antebellum south finds its corollary in resistance in throughout the African Atlantic, and places North America on the continuum where visual arts become tools of resistance throughout the African Diaspora. The work is a synthesis of interdisciplinary study. First, research outlines presents, and circumscribes the content used to throughout the presentation. Secondly, visual art makes the unseen seen, using encoding, obscurity, assemblage, collage, bricolage, containment and ambiguity. Signs, symbols, codes, composition, marks, colors, and designs, were means of surreptitious, yet public communication of directions, and information to be "read," and "seen," and understood only by the "initiated." Finally, performance art engages, teaches, and inspires and communicates with and on the mental, emotional and spiritual domains.