A Black Gaze is Wellness Manifested
Lately “soft life” has been taking over the conversations we are having digitally and interpersonally. If someone decides to call out of work, quit their job, create a playlist or simply grease their scalp, I can bet you “the soft life” is behind it.
I’m glad that we are channeling our inner Bey, basking in our Alien Superstardom, not letting the perils of this world break our souls. However, I can’t say that I’m onboard with the way our wellbeing is exploited and put on a shelf for commodification.
I am here for everyone to tap into their health and wellbeing, whatever that means to them. I wonder if the motions of the soft life manifesto is blinding our vision to what truly matters…our perception.
Wellbeing & Artists
Dr. Tina Campt, is the author of “A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How we See”, in this beautiful work of critique and epiphany she drops gems on what “A Black Gaze” is and how Black artists are shifting the way we interact with visual storytelling.
“A Black gaze is a structure of visual engagement that implicitly and explicitly understands blackness as neither singular or a singularity;….it is at once a critical framework, a reading apparatus a term that describes an artist’s practice, and a spectatorial mediation that demands particularly active modes of watching, listening and witnessing.” (Campt 2021, p. 21)
Campt offers a new way of understanding, engaging with and processing the work of Black artists by giving audiences tools to view themselves as active participants in a (or body of) work.
In a post Summer 2020 world, where the “high art” industry has had a grand realization of Black artists and their undeniable skill and human stories; Campt offers us a framework that turns White supremacy (and its need to latch on to and imperialize dope shit) and the the art world on its head. It’s not just about getting the work of conscious raising artists into the gallery and museum but changing the perceptions of the audiences!
Written as verses to a song, Campt offers us six verses that essentially introduce us to the ways artists (all of them are not Black) force us too recognize the humanity, complexity and dignity of Black life.Verse 4, “The Slow Lives of Still-Moving-Images” unpacks the way artists use stillness and slowness to alter our understanding of time.
Campt argues that still images and works - where slow movement is the cornerstone - help us center care and attention to ourselves and the subjects. She says that these slow moving images show us “what it means to live in blackness an ongoing state of precarity in which an ethics of care is an existential means of survival.”
Campt is telling us that some artists( she highlights Okwui Okpokwasili and Dawoud Bey) change audiences perspectives through slow moving or still images as a way to reinforce the level of care that it takes to simply survive being Black. Think of it as, walking a mile in Black shoes.
As I read this chapter, health and wellbeing kept coming to mind. With Roe V. Wade now terminated by the U.S. Supreme Court, maternal mortality rates rising among Black folk, the leprosey, also known as Monkeypox that was unleashed, COVID still floating around…. I mean how could I not? I then began to wonder what artists could show us and has shown us about our physical health.
Wellness Manifested:
I know we all have experienced the beige colored info-graphics at the doctor’s office. The ones that tell you where your small intestine vs. large intestine, or the one that details the human skeletal structure. How about the one at gynecologist's office that distinguishes the inner labia from the outer labia and reveal how small women’s cervix really are? These images force us to sit with the anatomy of our bodies and have historically (during the eugenics movement) been made to CREATE what we now call “racial identity”.
Ni-Ka Ford, is a black woman medical illustrator who creates still images, allowing us to watch and witness the medical humanity of Black people. At the cutting of edge of science art and technology Ni-Ka says,
“Representation in this space moves society’s understanding of health and wellbeing forward by recognizing that everyone is deserving of equitable treatment and quality care. It is difficult for some people to care for what they do not see, so representation is the bare minimum in moving towards a society that is focused on the wellbeing of all individuals.”
I was able to get a bit deeper with Ni-Ka about the medical illustration industry, DO NOT FINISH THIS READ WITHOUT checking out our full interview here!
