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Narcissister’s performances in masks and merkins question the fluctuating status of objecthood and subjectivity in popular renderings of the black female body. Embracing a DIY aesthetic, Narcissister scavenges material and image. Her citation of dance functions as the active disavowal of virtuosity, shifting attention from climax to aspiration, delineating an aesthetic of dramaturgical disavowal that performs an alternate imaginary for the racialized, gendered American body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the turn of the last century, Bert Williams and George Walker performed as a minstrel duo in which only Williams wore burnt cork. By mixing the surfaces of blacking and their own black skin, Williams and Walker offered an aesthetic critique of the subject/object status of the black body—animating the inanimate substance of burnt cork while objectifying animate black skin. Examples from portrait photography and the visual art of Whitfield Lovell and Kara Walker support arguments about the agency of surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the works of Ghanaian painter Papa Essel. It discusses his use of adkinkra symbols to incorporate his cultural background into his paintings, compares his use of colors to that of traditional African art which uses kente cloth, and explores his use of words in his paintings to discuss social issues such as gold mining, wealth, and racial identity.