Final yr, I attended an exhibition by a mid-career Black artist presenting a brand new physique of labor. The works had been figurative and monumental. The artist had created a fictional historical kingdom through which god-like Black figures peopled an Arcadian panorama. In piece after piece, these figures labored, performed and cherished, with agency glutes and rippling chest muscle tissue. It was spectacular, breath-taking even, however as I wandered by way of the exhibit, I puzzled, the place had been the pot-bellied and love-handled?
Kerry James Marshall has spoken concerning the absence of the Black determine within the Western artwork canon. One solely has to stroll by way of the museums in London to check the accuracy of his assertion. On the Nationwide Portrait Gallery, beginning on the highest ground with Henry VII and his Tudor descendants, white women and men gaze on the viewer, dressed within the hoses and corsets of their time.
After a number of rooms, you would possibly probability upon Thomas Jones Barker’s The Secret of England’s Greatness. On this portray from round 1862-63, Queen Victoria presents a Bible to a kneeling ambassador from East Africa. His portrait may be the primary you see of a Black individual after an hour spent within the museum. And he isn’t even standing.
Thomas Jones Barker’s The Secret of England’s Greatness (round 1862-63)
It’s no marvel then that Black artists have rushed to fill this vacuum. In Kehinde Wiley’s work, younger Black males in hoodies and sneakers, rear triumphantly on horses. In Amy Sherald’s, Welfare Queen, a slim, regal Black girl with a crown on her head, gazes majestically on the viewer. In Kerry James Marshall’s Previous Occasions, his higher middle-class Black topics play golf, picnic by a river, jet ski and steer a motorised boat.
Kehinde Wiley, Equestrian Portrait of Philip IV (2017) within the assortment of the Philbrook Museum of Artwork, Tulsa, OK
As I feel by way of these works by these necessary artists, a query types in my thoughts. Do Black artists who make figurative work, really feel pressured to current a noble, aspirational picture of the Black physique that challenges each the deliberate erasure and the racist tropes of the Western artwork canon? And if certainly, some Black artists really feel this stress, what about extra ambivalent narratives across the Black physique, much less inspirational, extra introspective. Is there house for these Black artists?
It’s why I’m drawn to the work of Nkechi Ebubedike. Born in Baltimore in 1984 to Nigerian dad and mom, Ebubedike studied Fantastic Artwork at Carnegie Mellon College and has a Grasp’s diploma from Central St Martins in London. Her earlier works had been conventionally figurative, drawn in a realist type. As her apply developed, impressed by Francis Bacon and Phyllida Barlow, her figures grew to become heavier, extra weighed down and distorted.
How do you discover a determine that encapsulates the emotional and psychological weight of being Black within the West? Ebubedike’s creative experimentations transfer her ever nearer to answering this query. Ebubedike’s Black our bodies contort, squat to defecate, loll submerged in water, with eyes that gaze previous the viewer, misplaced in their very own psychological world. She paints the Black determine from the within out.
Nkechi Ebubedike, Nude on Wooden Block (2020) Picture: © the artist, courtesy of Tafeta
In Nude on Wooden Block, a Black determine balances precariously between two plinths. The top and neck relaxation on one plinth, whereas the torso and legs relaxation on the opposite. The determine’s again curves in a easy line however the energy of the physique is compressed. The picture is startling, uncomfortable to take a look at and but, additionally, unusually stunning. The determine has achieved a balletic grace by by some means contriving to maintain their stability.
The determine in Nude on Wooden Block isn’t based mostly on an actual individual. Nonetheless, any Black one who has ever contorted themselves to look extra palatable, by switching their accent or adopting a European identify for instance, will immediately recognise the emotional and psychological fact of this picture.
In Ebubedike’s most up-to-date work, seemingly surreal components have been launched. In Partitions, a black leg protrudes from a wall and a severed hand juts out of a picket block. What does this dismembered Black physique imply? I’ve heard it stated that plenty of Western “civilisation” was constructed on Black our bodies. For instance, with the wealth generated from the Trans-Atlantic slave commerce. With the chopped arms of the Black labourers on King Leopold’s rubber plantations within the Congo, whose labour constructed his Belgian palaces. With the Black roots of Rock and Roll, Jazz and viral Tiktok dances. Our contributions might not at all times be acknowledged however we’re within the basis of the home.
Additionally, within the West, cultural, political and financial gatekeepers who are sometimes nonetheless white, need bits of blackness, chopped up and appropriated to serve their very own functions. However they don’t need the Black physique complete. They like it dismembered. It’s arduous to take a look at Ebubedike’s work with out flinching. Maybe it’s why she’s not but higher recognized.
I really like the inspirational and aspirational portraits of Kehinde Wiley, Bisa Butler, Arthur Timothy, Amy Sherald, Ben Enwonwu, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Akinola Lasekan, Lina Iris Viktor and on and on the listing goes. I like to see the Black physique dignified, ennobled, placed on a pedestal and dressed with a crown. However blackness shouldn’t be a monolith. There isn’t just one option to be Black and there isn’t just one option to current the Black physique in visible artwork. So on this month’s column, I have a good time Nkechi Ebubedike’s experimentation and look ahead to seeing what she does subsequent.
• Chibundu Onuzo is a novelist and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Learn her month-to-month column Slade to Zaria right here
