Dynamic Africa

Tanekeya Word is an African American artist that lives and works in Washington, DC.  Tanekeya considers herself part of a collective of people from the African Diasporans called Afrofuturists. She quotes Afrofuturrism as

“a way of looking at the world; it’s a sort of canopy for looking at Black diasporic artistic production. It’s even an epistemology that is really about thinking about the future, thinking about the subject position of Black people and how that’s both alienating and about alienation and because the alien becomes to figure quite centrally in Afrofuturism—the outsider figure. It’s also about aspirations in majornity and having a place in majornity and it’s about speculation and utopia. Part of why it’s Afrofuturism in particular is that part of resilience in Black culture and Black life is about imagining the impossible, imagining a better place, a different world” (Alondra Nelson, 2010)

Her work engages the concept of AfroFuturism delving into what she describes as ” future “imagined ideas” of what it means to visually represent notions of Black and African Diasporan identity. Like many of us, Taneka finds herself inbetween a mixture of cultures ‘African American culture, African culture, Victorian Culture, Neo Imppresionasim, Pop Art’.

Her artistic exploration is fascinting and inspiring touching on many of the themes we see here on African Digital Art. Although her work is many ‘analogue’ what is particularly interesting and thought provoking about her ideas on Afrofuturism is applying it to digital media, taking note of how technology and digital media reimagines African identies across the globe. We hope to feature more AfroFuturist artists and projects from the diaspora

More on Tanekeya….

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