Negrophilia!
Abrons Art Centre, New York, USA 2015
The Citadel Arts Centre, St Helens, UK
Vienna, Austria - New Year’s Eve 2014
Chelsea Arts Centre, Duckie, London, UK - 2010 and 2014
‘…hot voodoo, black as mud, hot voodoo in my blood, that African tempo has made me a slave, hot voodoo dance of sin, hot voodoo worse than gin…!’
Marlene Dietrich, Blonde Venus, 1932
Negrophilia is a comprehensively documented Euro-American fascination with African and Black diasporic cultures. The allure continues to be prevalent in European cultures through many forms and guises, from academia to Art and popular culture.
Negrophilia! (The Live Performance) is an exploration of the Parisian avant-garde culture of the 1920’s and it’s fascination with Africanism (Negrophilia). It also references Hollywood cinema’s representation of the ‘exotic’ during and ensuing the same era with films such as, King Kong, I Walked with a Zombie and Cat People, artists such Man Ray, Picasso and Méret Oppenheim and Darwin’s illustrations of evolution, encapsulated through the image and political discourses of Josephine Baker.