Mixed Race Studies

A Brazilian Artist’s ‘Self-Portraits’ Explore The Beauty Of Interracial Identity

The Huffington Post
2016-06-17

Katherine Brooks, Senior Arts & Culture Editor

In honor of mestizaje, Adriana Varejão paints herself donning the markings and ornamentation of Native Americans.

In 1976, a Brazilian census asked citizens of the country — for the very first time — to describe and identify their own skin color.

This was a significant moment for the former European colony, now considered one of the most ethnically diverse nations in the world, that’s historically struggled with discriminatory policies that disproportionately affect African descendants and interracial people. Though it may have been used for more nefarious purposes at the time, the census was a small step in affirming the many identities that exist in Brazil, wedged in the massive gap between black and white.

The survey produced over 130 different skin color descriptions, ranging from “Morena-roxa” (purplish-tan) to “Café-com-leite” (milky coffee) to “Queimada-de-sol” (sun-kissed). Fast forward a few decades, and Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão became transfixed with the multitude of colors expressed in the census, interested in the ways it illustrated — in sensual detail — the beauty of mestizaje, or the mixing of ancestries, in her home.

So in 2014, Varejão, who lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, created “Polvo,” a series of self-portraits that explore the diversity of identity in Brazil using a paint palette inspired by the 1976 census. First, she mixed oil paints herself, reproducing colors like “Amarela-quemada” (burnt yellow or ochre) and “Paraíba” (like the color of marupa wood) as pigments. Then, she painted her own image, over and over, in a variety of browns, pinks, blacks and whites; a reflection of the many ways Brazilian self-definition takes form…

Read the entire article here.

Talking Race: Space and Body

The Bennington Free Press
Bennington College, Bennington College, Vermont
2016-05-26

Samantha Barnett ‘19

I constantly think about how I move through space, how I claim space, how being mixed race means not knowing how my body will be identified. I think about how the first thing that I do when I walk into a classroom is count how many people of color are in the room. I think about whether or not they will identify me as a person of color; I think about how the professor already has. I think about being in an anthropology class, the discussion for the day being on race, the class divided into groups– there is one person of color per group. We’re here to “explain race.” I think about walking through my common room one day and listening to two white students saying, “Why do we call people of color ‘people of color’? It’s stupid, what can we call them instead?”

One of the first things that I’ve learned as a student of color at Bennington is how to hear what I’m really being asked…

Read the entire article here.

Visible and Invisible Hapa Exhibit at Japanese American Museum San Jose

Hapa Mama: Asian Fusion Family and Food
2016-05-20

Grace Hwang Lynch

Bay Area people… there’s an exhibit about the history of hapa Japanese Americans at the Japanese American Museum in San Jose.

Titled Visible and Invisible, it’s similar to the exhibit of the same name at LA’s Japanese American National Museum, but this collection is unique and has many ties to the local area.

Curated by historical sociologist Cindy Nakashima and art professor Fred Liang, the small but significant collection shows the history of mixed-race Japanese Americans from the 1860s to the current day, when the majority of Japanese Americans are projected to be mixed-race by 2020. “The first Nisei was a hapa, for heaven’s sake!” says Nakashima, who also curated the 2013 Los Angeles exhibit with Lily Anne Yumi Welty and Duncan Ryuken Williams.

Read the entire article here.

Yara Shahidi, the Iranian-American Star of ‘Black-ish,’ Is Breaking Stereotypes On & Off Screen

Muftah
2016-06-03

Alex Shams

Over the last two years, the hit ABC sitcom “Black-ish” has deftly explored issues of race, class, and gender in the United States through the eyes of an upper-middle class, African-American family. The show has received rave reviews for portraying the unique struggles of the Johnson family, offering an incisive critique of racism in modern America without being too preachy.

What few people know, however, is that the role of Zoey, the Johnson’s eldest daughter, is played by a sixteen-year-old, Iranian-American actress. Born to an Iranian father, Afshin Shahidi, and a mother of mixed African-American and Native Choctaw heritage, Keri Salter, Yara Shahidi lived in Minneapolis before moving to California at a young age…

Read the entire article here.

Large Abroad | London poet laureate Raymond Antrobus staying true to Jamaican roots

The Gleaner
Kingston, Jamaica
2016-06-13

Andre Poyser

Raymond Antrobus

Raymond Antrobus continues to be in strong contention to be named Young Poet Laureate for London – a position awarded annually to a poet age 21-30 living in the United Kingdom capital.

Antrobus, a second-generation Jamaican born and bred in East London, has been redefining what it means to be a poet in the 21st century through monologues, which Calabash co-founder Kwame Dawes describes as stunning studies of voice and substance.

While he only visits Jamaica occasionally, the young poet says he owes his graceful and finely crafted lyric poems, another characterisation penned by Dawes, to his Jamaican heritage…

Read the entire article here.

‘Breaking’ Presents: Xenia Rubinos, a Powerhose Singer/Songwriter Unafraid to Learn Out Loud

Colorlines
2016-06-10

Sameer Rao, Culture Reporter/Blogger

Xenia Rubinos in concert Photo: John Felix Shaw/Anti- Records

On her funky second album, “Black Terry Cat,” the genre-bender explores identity, police violence and the hidden labor of Latino/a restaurant workers.

For our latest Breaking, we’re highlighting singer-songwriter Xenia Rubinos. The multi-instrumentalist, who hit the national scene with 2013’s “Magic Trix,” continues her personal and creative development on the funky, frenetic “Black Terry Cat.”

Hometown: Hartford, Connecticut

Based In: New York City

Sound: A chaotic mix of R&B, rock, hip-hop and jazz that underscores Rubinos’ robust mezzo-soprano. Her lyrics are sometimes wry, sometimes incorporating Spanish-language passages,

Why You Should Care: Depending on your background and worldview, Xenia Rubinos’ music sounds either like modern-day Latin pop, avant-garde R&B or a tapestry from an indie artist with too many influences to count. Either way, it sounds like nothing you’ve heard before—which, as she told us, is kind of the point.

…Juxtaposed, “Mexican Chef” and “Black Stars” speak volumes about the ongoing evolution of Rubios’ identity. While she identifies as Afro-Latina, she tells Colorlines that she does not identify as Black. “My family history is complicated, and I still don’t fully know the extent of it,” she says after describing her Black maternal great grandmother, her Puerto Rican family’s Taino heritage and her paternal grandfather’s emigration from Spain. “I started reading on the Afro-Latina diaspora two years ago, and I’m still ignorant to a lot of that, but I started seeing myself in that term. I explore the ‘Afro’ part of my cultural identity, and how I do or don’t fit into that, on ‘Black Terry Cat.'” She says that’s a big part of why hip-hop permeates this album…

Read the entire article here.

On Her Second Album, Xenia Rubinos Finds a New Language to Talk About Latinidad

Remezcla
2016-06-01

Isabelia Herrera

At a time when the political utility of the Afro-Latino label is as urgent as ever, it’s easy to forget that the journey to embrace that identity isn’t always immediate. Before recording her sophomore album Black Terry Cat (ANTI- Records), Boricua-Cuban artist Xenia Rubinos did not identify as Afro-Latina. So when she embarked on the recording process this time around, Rubinos envisioned the album as a vehicle to explore her brownness and blackness, to rediscover her place in the African diaspora.

That’s why hip-hop is Black Terry Cat’s lifeblood. “I was listening to a lot of hip-hop at the time. It was a new exploration for me, getting into Slum Village and KRS-One, as well as going back to Erykah Badu, which was starting to become my daily diet,” she explains. Rubinos lays those influences bare on Black Terry Cat; the record vibrates with clanging percussive interludes, stream-of-consciousness lyrics, and deep pocket backbeats. It’s a clattering, experimental triumph that leaps from thick funk basslines to spooky horn sections and then to broken-down hip-hop beats, like a kid playing with Legos. Above it all, Rubinos’ warm, smoky voice flutters about, revealing a vocal dexterity and a slew of alter egos the listener is constantly trying to catch up with…

Read the entire interview here.

An Octoroon

Woolly Mammoth Theater
641 D Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20004
2016-05-30 through 2016-06-26

By Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Directed by Nataki Garrett

A plantation on the brink of foreclosure. A young gentleman falling for the part-black daughter of the estate’s owner. An evil swindler plotting to buy her for himself. Meanwhile, the slaves are trying to keep things drama-free, because everybody else is acting crazy.

An Octoroon, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Obie-winning riff on a 19th century melodrama that helped shape the debate around the abolition of slavery, is an incendiary adaptation that the New York Post called “entertainingly demented.” Part period satire, part meta-theatrical middle finger, it’s a provocative challenge to the racial pigeonholing of 1859—and of today.

As part of a special Connectivity initiative around An Octoroon, join DC area changemakers, thought leaders, activists and artists for a provocative series of engagement opportunities around every single performance of An Octoroon. We want to inspire conversation and reflection. We want to galvanize our audiences. That’s why we exist. That’s what we promise our community. Please visit our House Lights Up Events page for more information about these special events.

Social-practice art challenges the status quo

The Winnipeg Free Press
2016-05-30

Alison Gillmor, Writer – Arts and Life

From KC Adams’ Perception series, 2014-15.

Adams’ portraits blend personal, political

Even if you don’t regularly visit art galleries, you probably saw some of KC Adams’ work in the weeks following the notorious Maclean’s magazine article that labelled Winnipeg “Canada’s most racist city.”

Perception, a photographic series the visual artist started in 2014, was all over the place, challenging stereotypes about indigenous people from bus shelters, billboards, and across social media.

Using black-and-white photographic diptychs, Adams shot each of her subjects twice. In the first image, the faces are accompanied with ugly words such as “Squaw,” “Victim” and “Government Mooch.” In the second image, the subjects — usually looking much happier — offer up their own descriptions of themselves (“golfer,” “homeowner,” “taxpayer,” “father,” “mother,” “sundancer”). The two-part images are straight-up, immediate and effective.

Adams, who is of Cree, Ojibway, Scottish, and English descent, was thrilled to see the works on city streets, where average Winnipeggers might view them while waiting for a bus, grabbing some lunch or going to a Jets game. “(Perception) is not geared toward the art world,” Adams explains. “It’s geared toward the public.”…

Read the entire article here.

Dancer, painter, soldier … Tottenham brothers on their way to the top

The Guardian
2016-05-28

Jessica Elgot

From left to right, Solomon, Kidane and Amartey … ‘We are fiercely proud – we didn’t feel like these institutions were worlds away.’ Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Maryam Golding’s three oldest sons – an artist, a soldier and a ballet dancer – are all on the way to the top. Much of that, they say, is due to their parents, who brought them up to be fiercely proud of their mixed race heritage

Maryam Golding rarely gets her three eldest sons together round the dinner table at her small west London flat. Her boys have extraordinary reasons to be busy. The last time the whole family was crowded into the living room, her middle son was celebrating winning the Sword of Honour at Sandhurst, his younger brother was between performances with the Royal Ballet and his older brother, an artist, was back from a sell-out residency in Dubai…

Read the entire article here.