To Exist and Be Seen: A Look at Afrosurrealist Art through a Black Gaze [ABRIDGED]

May 13th, 2023 – Notes from a Saturday spent in the Photographers Gallery  

It’s expansive--my idea of cool, my idea of real. But I notice as I work to conflate the two concepts, their similarities begin to highlight even larger contradictions. Contradictions that start to exclude myself as an example of either. Contradictions both interrogated and subsequently evaded by the works in front of me.  

Black man standing in as multiple men in military uniforms, self-portraits of [Samuel] Fosso. Don’t know what he means but he seems cool, real. The muted natural wool blend layers fit on him, would they fit on me? I trust the outfit on him, when he smiles in green I believe it, strength in blue I believe it. In these photos I’m reminded of a history I know existed. Even in these stark white backgrounds, his representation of this military persona is one that I believe. Am I meant to believe?  

When he’s naked, kneeled over on an empty bed. I start to believe him less. Why? Maybe it’s the way he turns and his body doesn’t follow. He hides, but I can’t get why he would hide. He took the picture, same as the last, but I don’t know if I believe it. I understand his condition of nudity, even more than any histories of the specific military powers referenced. I understand that both men are the same man, they share the same face. I am this naked man more than the last. He’s undeniably real, but I don’t know if it’s cool, I don’t know if I believe it. Maybe because I’m choosing not to, maybe I’m not meant to believe either man individually. Maybe I’m meant to believe inthe man that is both men, both cool and real, existing invisibly in the shift of my eyes from one frame to the next. (From my notes, 2023) 

Samuel Fosso, ALLONZENFANS (Diptych 3), (2013) 

 Samuel Fosso, Mémoire d’un ami (54), (2000) 

This stream of consciousness was written as I walked around looking at the work of photographer Samuel Fosso, who was sharing the space with Arthur Jafa, Frida Orupabo, and Bieke Depoorter. Their works were being shown in the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize exhibition, showcasing artists described by the Photographers Gallery as those who, “all push the boundaries of photography and exemplify its resonance and relevance as a cultural force today” (The Photographers Gallery: 2023). The work specifically of Jafa, Orupabo, and Fosso had a common thread of addressing aspects of Black personal and cultural identities. Orupabo’s collages both making use of existing images, and crafting new images of, Black women as their main subject. Large life-size paper dolls in Black and white sit, stand, play, and fly along the walls of the room. Faces prominently gazing at the viewer, or stares in conversation with each other, the exhibition was aptly titled I have seen a million pictures of my face and still I have no idea (2022). 

Frida Orupabo, Turning, (2021)  

Frida Orupabo, Batwoman, (2021)  

These images, although not self-portraiture, rival the neighboring Fosso images in their abundance of varied depictions of lives and stories. These stories continue with the work of Arthur Jafa, mounted in the next room over. Plastic molded 3D to the previously 2D Image of an Ex-Slave Gordon (2017), with special attention made to the details--to the mountains and ravines of scars on his back facing the viewer.  

Arthur Jafa, Ex-Slave Gordon 1863, (2017) 

 As I continued to document my immediate reactions, the only words I could write in the moment to describe this specific work was, “Jafa’s topographic map of scars, Gordon’s scars.” In retrospect I feel the phrase “map of scars” is an accurate summary of all of Jafa’s works exhibited, tackling the legacy and current lives of Black folk. The final notes that I wrote upon leaving the exhibition were two reflective statements, “To exist AND be represented” and, “To be forced to live in a reality below your level of understanding.” The former statement, written directly in the aftermath of having seen the works, felt like a celebratory affirmation--a relief. The latter, written on the busy streets of Central London post-gallery-exit, felt like a re-grounding in a separate flattened reality than that of the ones shown in the works by those three artists. It was around the same time that I was introduced to the symbiotic concepts of a ‘Black Gaze’ through the book of the same title by author Tina M. Campt, and the writings of D. Scott Miller and his notions of ‘Afrosurrealism.’

The terms ‘Afrosurreal’ and ‘Afrosurrealism’ sit in a flux between the old and the new. Originally hailed from the term “Afrosurreal Expressionism” which writer and cultural critic Amiri Baraka used to describe the writing of poet Henry Dumas in 1974, author and poet D. Scott Miller (2013) first coined the specific concepts of the ‘Afrosurreal’ and ‘Afrosurrealism’ in his 2009 Afro-surreal Manifesto. Miller subsequently republished his writings in 2013 as AFROSURREAL MANIFESTO Black Is the New Black-a 21st-Century Manifesto. In this writing Miller set out to cement Afrosurrealism, something he describes as having been a both long-existing tradition and re-emerging practice amongst those who are investing in the creation of “freaky Black art.” (Miller, 2013: 115) This cementing is partially done through traditional forms of declarative manifesto, Miller writes 10 commandments that describe the ways of the Afrosurrealists. 

The surreal component of Afrosurrealism does not come from an alteration of the mind through dreams, drugs, or other methods, as done by the surrealists, instead Miller posits that there exists an element of the bizarre and surreal in everyday contemporary life. To Miller there are not two worlds that need combining, but instead a world that needs a deeper different level of inspection in order to be fully revealed. The second commandment of Afrosurrealism reads,  

Afrosurreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it. Like the African Surrealists, Afrosurrealists recognize that nature (including human nature) generates more surreal experiences than any other process could hope to produce. (Miller, 2013: 116).  

When thinking about the way Miller describes uncovering, or seeing, an “invisible world striving to manifest'' that exists beyond the “visible world,” I am brought to the words of writer and professor Tina M. Campt and her seven verses that describe an emerging way seeing, A Black Gaze. In the prelude to her seven verses Campt presents a foundational question for her exploration of this Black gaze. When thinking about current state of Black visuality and contemporary art she writes, “Here the radical question they are posing is: rather than looking at Black people, rather than simply multiplying the representation of Black folks, what would it mean to see oneself through the complex positionality that is Blackness—and work through its implications on and for oneself?” (Campt, 2021:7). This idea of using the positionality and precarity of Blackness as a lens, not to just view, look at, or describe Black people, but instead use it to view all of the world is what constitutes this Black gaze and I believe is in line with Miller’s musings on the visible and invisible worlds that exist to be uncovered with the Afrosurreal. Campt’s Black Gaze is communal, “It is a Black gaze that shifts the optics of ‘looking at’ to a politics of looking with, through and alongside another.” (Campt, 2021: 8) Campt makes the distinction between this Black gaze and the more commonly referred to gazes existing in film theory, such as the male gaze and imperial gaze,  

My idea of a Black gaze is one that disrupts the equation of a gaze with structures of domination by refusing to reduce its subject to objects, and refusing to grant mastery or pleasure to a viewer at the expense of another. As a concept that is not limited to understanding spectatorship solely or specifically in relation to the dynamics of film and film theory, a Black gaze rejects traditional understandings of spectatorship by refusing to allow its subject to be consumed by its viewers. A Black gaze transforms viewer into witnesses and demands a confrontation. (Campt, 2021: 38-9).  

This Black gaze as a way of seeing, and being in conversation with, the world that Black people inhabit allows for and encourages those who aren’t Black to bear witness and create art through it. Much like Afrosurrealism there exists no phenotypical or ethnic barrier to this Black gaze, but instead has the need for its practitioners and engagers to shift from a white-imperialistic way of interaction with art and the world. This non-restrictive position is not without controversy, in a chapter focusing on the mixed-race (but not Black) artist Luke Willis Thompson, his creation of what he himself labels as “Black art” and the subsequent criticisms that come from that labeling, Campt makes the stance of a Black gaze’s lack of restriction explicit, 

Black gaze does not describe the viewpoint of Black people. It is not a gaze restricted to or defined by race or phenotype. It is a viewing practice and a structure of witnessing that reckons with the precarious state of Black life in the twenty-first century. A Black gaze transforms this precarity into creative forms of affirmation (Campt, 2021: 172).  

I believe that what Campt describes as a Black gaze makes clear what Miller means when he speaks of accessing the Afrosurreal through a new way of seeing, or the ability to uncover what lies beneath the visible world. Terri Francis professor of cinematic arts at the University of Miami, following Miller’s manifesto, wrote an entry anthologizing films through the context of Afrosurrealism. About this practice of seeing underneath, Francis writes, ”Afrosurrealism might be a sous- realism, a realism beneath.” (Francis, 2013: 105) Francis acknowledges Afrosurrealism’s openness and its ability to shift the way we view works of the past and present, she believes that its practitioners need not even “know about or believe in this term [Afrosurrealism]” in order to be included in its proliferation: 

Afrosurrealism is an open platform whereupon we might redefine the genres of Black film and of experimental film through comparing and situating them in the larger frame of surrealism’s many reverberations in music, literature, art, and theater as expressed in African Diaspora cinemas. Name a thing, watch it flee underground. What then is Afrosurrealism’s content? What does it create? It is itself partly invented and partly found (Francis, 2013: 109).  

The Afrosurreal already exists and strives to be further represented. The Afrosurreal can be “invented” and “found” through a practice of continuous seeing, searching, and noticing. If a Black gaze as described by Tina M. Campt can act as a lens through which Black living is viewed, the Afrosurreal is then found and created through a practice in which those observations are synthesized. It is my belief that a Black Gaze is the framework through which Afrosurrealism is visually realized, and ultimately made distinct from any past forms of surrealism. These concepts became extremely helpful in framing my thoughts on contemporary Black art and in understanding the sensibilities of the artists today, artists like Fosso, Jafa and Orupabo, creating works in that canon.

List of References 

Campt, T.M. (2021) A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.  

Francis, T. (2013) Introduction: The no-theory chant of afrosurrealism, Black Camera, 5(1), pp. 95–111. doi:10.2979/blackcamera.5.1.95.  

Fosso, S. (2000) Mémoire d’un Ami (54), Samuel Fosso, Available at: https://samuelfosso.com/works/memoire-d-un-ami-series/ (Accessed: 08 January 2024). 

Fosso, S. (2013) ALLONZENFANS (Diptych 3), Samuel Fosso, Available at: https://samuelfosso.com/works/allonzenfans-series/ (Accessed: 08 January 2024). 

Jafa, A. (2017) Ex-Slave Gordon 1863, The Photographers Gallery. Available at: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/dbpfp-2023-arthur-jafa#&gid=1&pid=1 (Accessed: 08 January 2024) 

Miller, D.S. (2013) Afrosurreal Manifesto: Black is the new black—a 21st century manifesto, Black Camera, 5(1), pp. 113–117. doi:10.2979/blackcamera.13.1.0515.  

Orupabo, F. (2021) Batwoman, Photography Now. Available at: https://photography-now.com/exhibition/150621 (Accessed: 08 January 2024) 

Orupabo, F. (2021) Turning, Photography Now. Available at: https://photography-now.com/exhibition/150621 (Accessed: 08 January 2024) 

The Photographers Gallery (2023) Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize 2023, The Photographers Gallery. Available at: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/deutsche-borse-photography-foundation-prize-2023 (Accessed: 31 October 2023).