Anansi Knowbody – Artist Statement

Duality/ polarity, opposite ends of extremes. My artwork makes critical analysis of social, political and cultural issues through the lens of various perspectives; that is… my various perspectives, those that I’ve contemplated. In my overstanding all things are connected and everything is utterly absurd. We exist in a paradox. There is no absolute wrong nor is there to be found a perfect right. 

I try to illustrate and make comparisons of these dualities and absurdities by highlighting the hetero black male experience juxtaposed with racial myths, stereotypes, re-contextualized racist imagery, indigenous mysticism, and ethnic pseudo science.  

Through the use of moving image, both found footage and things I’ve shot myself, I try to reproduce events or capture those events that occur in the world around us.  My work is strongly influenced by Italian neo realism in the manner of Vittorio De Sica's 1948 film Ladri di biciclette, also known as The Bicycle Thief. I work with untrained talent, people that I’ve known personally and locations that I’ve actually transverse to convey this message in an effort to draw connections and make associations, between the accepted and unaccepted regularly occurring absurdity of existence. 

In my work I take on the role of patriarch. It is male-centric yet foregoes misogyny. It is my effort to motivate, encourage and inspire the black male conscious specifically, both directly and subversively.  It is an attempt to re-contextualize previously conceived and wholly accepted notions (those impressed upon us, and those we adopted for ourselves) of what it means to be a “strong black man”.

Although rooted in screen-based media my work has evolved to include sculpture, and immersive spaces to function as conceptual critique of the state and society at large. In retrospect I’ve come to realize my own modus operandi of analyzing hegemonic ideological power structures, methods and reasons of dissemination, psychological warfare, and social stratifications, in an effort to learn how they work to create, support, and sustain one another.