Mixed Race Studies

Everyone’s Problem: Adrian Piper Tackles the Complexities of Race Relations Head-On

Artspace
2015-12-30

Artspace Editors

Adrian Piper receiving her Golden Lion from the 2015 Venice Biennale

The artist and philosopher Adrian Piper’s direct and subtly intellectual approach to unpacking the tangled issues of race, gender, identity, and belonging has inspired a generation of socially-conscious artists across all media, although her impact is just now being fully recognized: she was the recipient of the Golden Lion for best artist at this year’s Venice Biennale, and MoMA has recently announced plans for, in the words of Robin Pogrebin in the New York Times, “the most comprehensive exhibition to date on the conceptual artist,” set to open in 2018. In this excerpt from Phaidon’s Defining Contemporary Art, the curator Connie Butler responds to one of Piper’s most important video and installation works, Cornered from 1988.

Adrian Piper’s conceptual explorations of race and difference have made her a critical influence on subsequent generations of artists exploring race and the construction of identity. By 1988—after two decades in which she moved from a relatively traditional conceptual art practice to using her own body in her work, and to locating her subject matter in the fluidity of identity—she had begun to explore her own struggles with racial identity: namely, people’s assumptions about her race and their corresponding behavior towards her.

The pivotal video installation Cornered addresses this in the straightforward, analytical fashion common to all of Piper’s work. Viewers encounter the artist herself, a light-skinned black woman, looking out at them from a monitor placed in the corner of a room. On either side of it hang her father’s two birth certificates—one that identifies him as white, the other as black. A large table upended in front of the monitor distances us from all this, keeping Piper at a remove in space. Despite this, the artist faces us calmly and begins matter-of-factly. “I’m black. Now, let’s deal with this social fact, and the fact of my stating it, together. Maybe you don’t see why we have to deal with it together. Maybe you think this is just my problem, and that I should deal with it by myself. But it’s not just my problem. It’s our problem.”…

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Exhibit by Penn cultural anthropologist showcases Afro-Latinos in Philadelphia

Penn Current: News, ideas and conversations from the University of Pennsylvania
2015-12-10

Jacquie Posey

Free and enslaved Africans shaped and built Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Their descendants, known as Afro-Latinos, are featured in a new photo exhibition by cultural anthropologist Sandra Andino, associate director of the Latin American and Latino Studies Program at Penn.

“Afro-Latino in Philadelphia: Stories from El Barrio,” which opened on Dec. 4 at Taller Puertorriqueño, a community-based multidisciplinary arts organization in North Philadelphia, explores the intersection of African heritage and Latino identity.

Visitors can view the photographs and listen to an audio tour of the exhibit on their smartphone by scanning a designated QR code or going to the artist’s website and clicking the audio tour link…

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One Drop of Love 2015

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni
2015-12-30

Love & Gratitude to all who contributed to making 2015 an amazing year for One Drop of Love!

One Drop of Love is a multimedia one-woman show exploring the intersections of race, class, gender, justice and LOVE.

For more information, click here.

‘True Detective’ Helmer Cary Fukunaga Teams With John Legend For Pulitzer Winner ‘The Black Count’

Deadline Hollywood
2014-04-28

Dominic Patten

EXCLUSIVE: On fire since the success of HBO‘s True Detective this year, director Cary Fukunaga has lined up his next project I’ve learned. Teaming with John Legend and his Get Lifted Film Co. partner Mike Jackson, Fukunaga will adapt and helm a big-screen version of The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, And The Real Count of Monte Cristo for Sony. Get Lifted have optioned the Pulitzer-winning 2012 biography written by Tom Reiss that chronicles the life and adventures of French Revolution-era General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas…

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The many faces of Frederick Douglass

Democrat and Chronicle
Rochester, New York
2015-12-25

Jim Memmott, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English
University of Rochester, Rochester, New York

Portrait of Frederick Douglass taken November 3, 1882 by John Howe Kent, 24 State Street, Rochester, New York (Photo: Courtesy of the Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, University of Rochester River Campus Libraries)

In November 1882, Frederick Douglass, escaped slave, orator, abolitionist, writer, lecturer, was back in Rochester, the city where he had lived for nearly 30 years, to give a talk.

Not surprisingly, he found time to visit the studio of Rochester photographer John Howe Kent to pose for a portrait.

The photograph, which is among the collection of the University of Rochester, shows a white-haired, bearded and contemplative Douglass. He looks away from the camera, his brow furrowed, his eyes on a distant prize.

According to the authors of a rich and rewarding book, the recently published Picturing Frederick Douglass, Kent’s picture became a lasting image of Douglass. It was used as the illustration facing the title page of the last edition of Douglass’s autobiography. And it was reproduced again and again on monuments, on a postage stamp and in drawings.

As the subtitle of Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American makes clear, the Rochester picture is just one of many of Douglass taken during a time when photography was coming of age.

The authors of the book, John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd and Celeste-Marie Bernier, have identified 160 separate photographs of Douglass, a handful taken in Rochester, and all republished in the book.

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When a master class with ballerina Misty Copeland becomes a San Pedro homecoming

The Los Angeles Times
2015-12-23

Deborah Vankin, Contact Reporter

Ascendant ballerina Misty Copeland leads a master class during Monday’s celebration in San Pedro. (Christina House/For The Times)

The crowd of about 200 huddled in the parking lot of San Pedro City Ballet, ensconced in fog and drizzle. Restless and excited, they might have been awaiting the arrival of a rock legend. Some rubbed their palms together to keep warm on the chilly Monday afternoon; others stretched their necks, peering down Pacific Avenue in anticipation. Neighbors crouched on the roof of a small bungalow next door to get a glimpse of the action.

When at last a gray SUV rolled up, smartphones and tablets shot into the air and the chanting began: “Misty, Misty, Misty.”

San Pedro’s ballet prodigy was home.

A populist ballerina if ever there was one, Misty Copeland has become a pioneering hero not just to dance hopefuls but to a generation of young women looking for inspiring, boundary-breaking athletic and artistic role models. Earlier this year, the American Ballet Theatre soloist was promoted to principal dancer; she is the New York company’s first African American woman to hold that title. And she was the first African American woman to dance the lead in an ABT “Swan Lake” production. It’s partly why Copeland landed on the cover of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” issue this spring…

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José Maurício Nunes Garcia

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Last modified: 2015-12-08

José Maurício Nunes Garcia (September 20, 1767 – April 18, 1830) was a Brazilian classical composer, one of the greatest exponents of Classicism in the Americas.

Born in Rio de Janeiro, son of mulattos, Nunes Garcia lost his father at an early age, and his mother perceived that her son had an inclination for becoming a musician and, for this reason, improved her work to allow him to continue his musical studies.

Nunes Garcia became a priest and, when prince John VI of Portugal came to Rio de Janeiro with his 15,000 people, Nunes Garcia was appointed Master of the Royal Chapel. He sang and played the harpsichord, performing his compositions as well as those of other composers such as Domenico Cimarosa and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was a very prestigious musician in the royal court of John VI.

His musical style was strongly influenced by Viennese composers of the period, such as Mozart and Haydn. Today, some 240 musical pieces written by Nunes Garcia survive, and at least 170 others are known to have been lost¹. Most of his compositions are sacred works, but he wrote also some secular pieces, including the opera Le due gemelle and the Tempest Symphony…

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New York Times Just Boarded the Post-Racial Express: A critical response to “Choose Your Own Identity”

Multiracial Asian Families
2015-12-16

Sharon H. Chang

screen shot from NY Times Magazine

This Monday, The New York Times Magazine published a very unfortunate essay about multiracial Asian children: Choose Your Own Identity, by author and mother Bonnie Tsui. In it, Tsui (who is not multiracial herself) puzzles over her children’s mixed-race identities, what they may or may not choose to be one day, while taking a brief foray back/forward in time to consider the sociohistorical context of mixed-race and America’s impending multiracial future. After mulling on the subject for about ten paragraphs, she concludes with a seeming liberatory message on behalf of her children: “…the truth is, I can’t tell my sons what to feel…I can only tell them what I think about my own identity and listen hard to what they have to tell me in turn.”

Sounds innocent enough, yes?

No…

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Bombay To Brooklyn: New York’s Indian Jews Strive To Preserve Heritage

News India Times
New York, New York
2015-12-14

Ela Dutt, Managing Editor

Siona Benjamin. Photo by Sami studio

Siona Benjamin, a greater New York City artist, hangs her “very typical” Indian Jewish Mezuzah, a prayer scroll in an engraved casing, on her door to remind her of her cultural roots. “Every time I walk through my main door, it reminds me of my Indian Jewish background,” especially so during Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights that began Dec. 6 and stretches over 8 days.

Originally from Bombay, Benjamin’s art is a blend of her background growing up in a Hindu and Muslim society, educated in Catholic and Zoroastrian schools, raised Jewish and now living in America. She is among the barely 100 or so Bene Israelis left in the Tri-state area, and the 350 or so around the U.S. according to Rabbi Romiel Daniel, rabbi and president of the Rego Park Jewish Center who since 1995, has tried to keep his flock together and raise awareness among the second and third generation Bene Israeli youth.

Some of the history of this small and unique community is captured in the exhibit “Baghdadis & the Bene Israel in Bollywood & Beyond” that opened in early November at the Center for Jewish History in New York City and will be on till April 1. Presented by the American Sephardi Federation, most of the items at the exhibit come from the Joyce and Kenneth Robbins collection, and highlight how Indian Jews, women in particular, were leaders in Bollywood and beyond at a time when custom and tradition kept many other Indian women out of Bollywood.

In exploring the largely forgotten history of the Bene Israel of India, the exhibition showcases the careers of Pramila (Esther Victoria Abraham), (Florence Ezekiel) Nadira, Sulochana (Ruby Myers), Abraham and Rachel Sofaer, Ezra Mir, RJ Minney, and Joseph David Penkar, each of whom played multiple roles in front of and behind-the-scenes in Bollywood…

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The Rise and Rise of Misty Copeland

The Year in Style 2015
The New York Times
2015-12-18

Ruth La Ferla

This year, Misty Copeland’s fame rose from her performances in ballet, on Broadway and in commercials. Credit Bon Duke for The New York Times, taken at Steps on Broadway in New York City.

Captivating a general audience, the prima ballerina is a crossover star: from ballet to Broadway to commercial fame.

Cherry Peace stood, feet firmly planted, at the stage door of the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in October. She was waiting for Misty Copeland, who had just wrapped up a matinee performance of Paul Taylor’s “Company B” at the American Ballet Theater, to kick off her toe shoes and exit.

There was no sign of Ms. Copeland, but Ms. Peace, 52, a writer who had traveled from Reno, Nev., expressly to see her, stayed rooted to the spot, hoping, if not for an autograph, at least for a glimpse of her idol.

“When you get older,” she said, “there are certain things you want to do. Seeing Misty Copeland was on my bucket list.”

Ms. Peace was among legions of fans — schoolgirls and seniors, New Yorkers and visitors, balletomanes and oddly assorted thrill seekers — who had thronged to Lincoln Center to see Ms. Copeland perform, in the Taylor ballet, and as Odile/Odette in “Swan Lake,” a crowning role for many dancers, and the first in the company for a black ballerina…

Red the entire article here.