Continent of Stars
In June 2012 the National Museum of African Art, nestled in DC’s epic Smithsonian Institution, unveiled a one-of-a-kind exhibit: African Cosmos: Stellar Arts. The brainchild of deputy director and chief curator Christine Mullen Kreamer, African Cosmos presented the legacy of continental art inspired by the cosmos, which stretches across thousands of years, threading distant cultures and times. Kreamer combined her lifelong fascination with stargazing and her work as a curator to assemble art, both ancient and modern, that spoke to the incredible influence of sky matters on art created by Africans. Heralded for its depth and perspective, the show was a whopping aha moment for spectators and journalists alike, many of whom had never thought about Africa’s science-inspired art. “This exhibition, many years in the making, is part of the museum’s series focusing on Africa’s contributions to the history of knowledge—in this case, knowledge about the heavens and how this knowledge informs the creation of spectacular works of art,” said Kreamer.
Works in the exhibit included an ancient Egyptian mummy board with an ornamented image of the sky goddess, Nut; the legendary Dogon sculptures; Yoruba sculptures honoring the thunder deity, Shango, and wind and lightning goddess, Oya; several Bamana antelope crest pieces, whose open-work manes imply the sun’s path through the sky; as well the Tabwa and Luba sculptures.
From ancient Nubian art on papyrus to a towering contemporary Rainbow Serpent made of repurposed containers, Kreamer’s impressive show gave definition to the too often ignored and often undefined legacy of African thoughts on the sky.
The exhibit featured contemporary artists as well, including El Anatsui, the late Alexander “Skunder” Boghossian, Willem Boshoff, Garth Erasmus, Romuald Hazoumè, Gavin Jantjes, William Kentridge, Julie Mehretu, Karel Nel, Marcus Neustetter, and Berco Wilsenach.6 It was the first major exhibit of its kind.
There’s a tendency to view Africa for its cultural contributions in music and art, Kreamer told me, and a reluctance to understand the continent’s long-standing contributions to science and our understanding of astronomy.
The African understanding of the universe is highly personal, says Kreamer. And the one hundred works showcased in the exhibit depicted relationships between humanity, the sun, moon, stars, and celestial phenomena. More than religious symbols or decorative art, these works were complex webs of philosophy and science that gave new meaning to life.
Traditionally, African cultures don’t separate science and art in the Western perspective of the divide. Dr. Malidoma Patrice Somé was boggled by the difference. “In Western reality, there is a clear split between the spiritual and the material, between religious life and secular life. This concept is alien to the Dagara,” writes Somé.7 Cultural astronomy, according to Kreamer, is the study of “lay experts and nonexperts who relate in the broadest sense to the sky,” and it gives a language to the non-Western ideals of bridging science, art, and wisdom. Although cultural astronomers focus heavily on native cultures in North and South America, Africa, says Kreamer, is ripe for rigorous study.
“In contrast to the Western inclination to separate bodies of knowledge into distinctive fields, African systems are often more expansive and inclusive, bringing together philosophical, religious and scientific concepts into a more holistic approach toward comprehending reality,” Kreamer writes in her book African Cosmos, a companion piece to the exhibit. Kreamer, among others, argues that the failure to view African art and science from an African perspective creates a gaping hole in the global knowledge base.
When I called Kreamer to interview her for this book, she initially didn’t quite understand how her show fit into a conversation about Afrofuturism. I shared that many Afrofuturists incorporate African mythology and spirituality in their work. The African Cosmos exhibit is a reminder that there is a legacy of weaving art, philosophy, and the realms of the sky from a black and African perspective that predates the term Afrofuturism and any newfound curiosity. A life inspired by science fiction resides in the myths and art of the ages.
“Afrofuturism has always been a part of our culture,” award-winning filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu said at TEDx Nairobi. Kahiu said that many African myths and folktales are laced with spiritualism and science fiction. “It’s always been a part of us,” she said.
This connection to an African and African-diasporic perspective and other ancient wisdom is one that Afrofuturists seek.
A Cultural Astronomer
Dr. Jarita Holbrook dedicates her life to uncovering the history of African stargazing. “My work as a researcher fills in the blanks. When you say African astronomy, there are only two [cultures] that come to mind, the Egyptians and the Dogon. The point was to give a voice to everyone else,” she says.
In fact, the spark for the study of cultural astronomy in sub-Saharan African is credited to the study of the Great Zimbabwean ruins in the nineteenth century that were found to align with celestial bodies. The Igbo, Bamana, Sandawe, Yoruba, Fante, and many others have rich astronomy cultures as well, and anthropologists and others are dedicated to their unearthing and documentation.
Holbrook studied a host of African cultures and their traditional relationships to the sky, and she is a big advocate for recognizing black astrophysicists. When asked how her curiosity in African cultural astronomy was piqued, she gives a one-word answer: “Racism.” Trained in astrophysics, Holbrook grew annoyed with the stares and odd questions she received as she studied for her PhD. “There’s a weird hazing. [People] act as if you don’t belong,” says Holbrook, who is also researching the trajectory of black women with PhDs in astrophysics and documenting the writing scripts in Africa with Kreamer. “But there is a history of black people looking at the sky.”
In fact, at the time of our interview, she was crowd-sourcing funds to shoot the documentary Black Sun, which follows two African American astrophysicists traveling to Australia and Japan to monitor the solar eclipse. When she’s not researching or teaching cultural astronomy, Holbrook’s writing science fiction. The Astronaut Tribe series, a yet-to-be-published work, is her debut sci-fi venture and was recently optioned for a film.
Holbrook began her career in African cultural astronomy by studying coastal groups and how they currently use the stars for navigation. She looked at sites in Tunisia in North Africa as well as Tanzania and Eritrea to the east and Gambia and Ghana in the west. Using the stars to navigate is a common practice, she says, adding, “I believe that, pretty much, you can walk around the coast of Africa and you can find people who navigate by the stars.”
She continues, “I’m very interested in women’s relationship to the sky and how they often use the moon to regulate their fertility.” She notes that the book Blood Magic, edited by Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb, points to African groups that look to the moon to determine where they are on their cycles. The planet Venus is connected with a feminine deity in African societies too. Holbrook says, “In West Africa, they tie the women initiation ceremony for the Mande family with Venus. Before the ceremony, they watch Venus to determine when the ceremony should begin.”
In 2006 Holbrook organized the first international conference on African cultural astronomy. The weeklong event was set to coincide with the solar eclipse on March 29 and brought the world’s African cultural astronomers together. Two years later she coedited African Cultural Astronomy with scholars R. Thebe Medupe and Johnson O. Urama, including essays on recent findings, research, and the conference itself. This body of work was a groundbreaking effort to bolster the study of African cultural astronomy and to integrate it into schools and universities. Research spanned the continent, looking to literature, art, lore, and anthropology. Holbrook hopes to catalog all of the cultural anthropological research and myths across the continent as well as the African scripts with sky symbols.
However, much of what scholars know about African cultural astronomy comes from African art. This was one of the reasons Holbrook was excited about the “African Cosmos” show. S
he says, “If they put their art on a semipermanent medium like the cast iron of the Dahomey—or wood carvings, stone carvings—those that practice in that medium can survive the times. Certain cultures we don’t know [about], because they weren’t using materials that would last.” Most African cultures have an agricultural calendar that’s directed by the sky and a creation story in which either their ancestors or God is connected to the sky, says Holbrook. “They’ll have artwork that is connected to the sky. Popular things to depict are the Milky Way, Venus, the sun, and the moon.”
Moreover, the animals used to describe groups of constellations reflect the region. “If you look at Pacific Island names for stars, you won’t find lions or bears, but you will find stingrays and fish. In Africa, you have giraffes, wildebeest, you have lions, and depending on where you are, you have leopards,” she says. She also says that because much of Africa is in the tropics, the constellations are arranged differently and follow tropical archaeoastronomy. “Not only does the sky look different and move differently, if you’re in the tropics, the sun, moon, and stars are directly overhead at some point. Outside of the tropics, stars are either south or north. When you live in the tropics, you don’t have stars that circle. Those in the tropics all see things move the same way.”
Holbrook also works with the Timbuktu Astronomy Project, helmed by Medupe. “We’re looking at the translation of Muslim astronomy in Africa,” she says. Medupe looks for variations in mathematics and science in the Arabic texts in various regions to determine if the local Africans modified it.
However, Holbrook doesn’t believe that Africa is unique in its historical and cultural relationship with the sky. “These things are common for cultures in Africa and are common for cultures in the world,” she adds. “The nature of racism is one where they expect Africans to have done nothing. So when you imply that they did things, or did what everyone else did, it’s earth-shaking. Why would Africans look at the sky? Why wouldn’t they? I feel like I have this activist role. Here I am causing trouble, finding that Africans study the sky.” Although the Egyptians and Dogon are highly researched, she encourages Afrofuturists to explore the plethora of African cultural astronomy, although she admits that information can be hard to come by. Nevertheless, the Somali, Mande (to which the Dogon belong), Dahomey, and Igbo are among those with intriguing cosmologies too, she says. “There’s so much work to be done,” she adds.
Umberto Eco wrote that writers are inspired by a question and their book is the answer. This simple insight into the nature of creativity applies to Afrofuturists as well. The mythmaking and time-travel themes and celebration of ancient wisdom are steam-powered by this idea that there simply must be more to the mythological canon than the stories we inherit. Just as Greek, Roman, and Norse myths undergird Western art, literature, entertainment, and architecture, Afrofuturists are among those thirsty for other ancient frameworks.
The mythology and beliefs that shaped African societies in antiquity are the greatest mystery of them all. Much of the records of these societies were purposely destroyed by invading societies. The dam built over Nubian homelands and ruins and Napoleon’s destruction of the historic library in Alexandria are just the tip of the iceberg. When ancient Egyptian language was banned following the nation’s takeover by Rome and later the Arabs, even the translation of the hieroglyphics was lost to the world, only to be restored centuries later by the painstaking work of linguists. But Egypt and Nubia withstood the test of time. Many ancient societies that thrived in the past are lost to us forever. If they were lucky, their art survived the perils of time. How many other wisdom traditions vanished in the rubble of history? What stories and heroes are lost in the winds of time? And what, if anything, could such tales from cultures past inform us of today about our humanity, our origins, and the purpose of life? How could this distant wisdom enrich our lives today?
I sometimes feel that Afrofuturism is the subconscious’s way of knocking at the door of present awareness, infusing those who are receptive with ideas and stories from worlds and times forever lost. Perhaps the mythmaking of today is the legacy and the subconscious, just the goddess’s way of sharing a vision.
Dr. Mae Jemison, the first black woman to go into space, always liked math and technology. But her space dreams were sparked by watching Lieutenant Uhura, the lone black character on Star Trek, each week. The role of Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols in the 1960s, has been reprised by Zoe Saldana in recent years. Nichols was one of the only black women on television in the 1960s and, next to Diahann Carroll’s Julia, one of the few who weren’t playing maids.
Uhura was written into Star Trek in part to use the show as a commentary about racial equality. But Nichols was frustrated that her character’s story line was underutilized, and she submitted a letter of resignation. The story goes that civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. hoped to change her mind.
“He said, ‘I’m the biggest Trekkie on the planet and I am Lieutenant Uhura’s most ardent fan,’ ” Nichols recalled. “ ‘You can’t abdicate your position,’ he said. ‘You are changing the minds of people across the world. For the first time, through you, we see ourselves. What we can be, what we are fighting for, what we are marching for.’ ” Nichols was convinced.1
In 2012 Mae Jemison launched the 100 Year Starship project, a nonprofit whose goal is to achieve interstellar travel by 2112.
And it all began with a fictitious character.
Mythmaking
“Women have a different approach in the way that they use Afrofuturism,” says art curator Ingrid LaFleur.
On November 11, 2011 (11-11-11), LaFleur launched My Mythos, an all-female Afrofuturist art show at Pittsburgh’s Fe Gallery. The show featured critically acclaimed artists Ayanah Moor, Alisha Wormsley, Krista Franklin, Staycee Pearl, and D. Denenge Akpem. “My Mythos examines how we create personal mythologies as a vehicle for transformation in order to achieve a new truth,” writes LaFleur. The artists, she adds, are “visionaries guiding our consciousness into their imagined realities.”
Most mythical creations are borrowed from ancient stories, but in Afrofuturism, artists are encouraged to create their own. Franklin, a poet and mixed-media collagist, showcased her series The Untold Legend of Naima Brown. Brown is a young shape-shifter who leaves a trail of coiled hair after every transformation. “She’s a shape-shifter who could weave hair,” says LaFleur. According to the myth, a childhood friend collects the hair, and the works in Franklin’s show are made of Brown’s remnants.
Wormsley created a story of a postapocalyptic world in which only black women and white men survived. “The men are trying to procreate, and they are in a sterile environment. So these women are in pods, and there’s a video that explains the whole story,” says LaFleur.
Akpem featured ceiling-draped decor inspired by her ancestors who moved to California for the Gold Rush. “She has these really great golden nuggets that swirl around,” says LaFleur. A choreographer, Pearl’s multimedia display cast a dancer transitioning from familiar to unfamiliar worlds. Moore, a printmaker, made her first multimedia work, an image of Ebony magazine that moved along a scanner. “She left it up to us to create our own mythology,” says LaFleur.
Afrofuturism is a free space for women, a door ajar, arms wide open, a literal and figurative space for black women to be themselves. They can dig behind the societal reminders of blackness and womanhood to express a deeper identity and then use this discovery to define blackness, womanhood, or any other identifier in whatever form their imagination allows.
Afrofuturists are not the first women to do this. Fine artist Elizabeth Catlett, author Zora Neale Hurston, and anthropologist/choreographer Katherine Dunham, among others, used imagination, art, and technology to redefine black and female expressions. However, Afrofuturism as a movement itself may be the first in which black women creators are credited for the power of their imaginations and are equally represented as the face of the future and the shapers of the future. Af
rofuturism celebrates women like Catlett, Hurston, and Dunham for using the imagination as a space of resistance and establishes a lineage of this history of thought.
In Afrofuturism, black women’s imagination, image, and voice are not framed by the pop expectations and sensibilities of the day. The black woman is not held to Middle America’s norms, trying to prove that she’s not government dependent or aspiring to the beauty ideals in the latest blogs. Nor is there some uniform expectation of blackness that she is called to maintain. Women develop theories, characters, art, and beauty free of the pressures of meeting male approval, societal standards, color-based taxonomies, or run-of-the-mill female expectations. The results are works that some critics call uncategorizable.
While the work is uncategorizable, so too are the creators. Janelle Monáe’s song “Q.U.E.E.N.” featuring Erykah Badu questions the concept of being a freak or exuding a natural, self-sustaining independence that doesn’t fit neatly into society’s modest expectations about women of color. They defy acceptable behavior particularly regarding dancing and appearance, with free-form dancing and eccentric dress interpreted as sexual, provocative, and largely unsettling. I’m reminded of a dance performance by A’Keitha Carey at a recent black existentialism conference. Carey, who is exploring Afrofuturism in dance, performed her dance style, CaribFunk, a fusion of classical ballet, modern, pilates fitness, and Afro-Carribean dance styles. The performance highlighted hip rotations, akin to belly dancing, and fluid arm movements. Let me note that the performance was not designed to tease sexually or stir up any sensuous emotions. After presenting, one curious male observer asked her how does one look at such a performance and not think about sexuality? How does one not objectify the performer? The very presence of a woman in control of her body was unsettling and for some triggered instant objectification. “They call us dirty because we break all your rules down,” Monáe sings in “Q.U.E.E.N.” “Even it makes others uncomfortable, I wanna love who I am.”
Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture Page 8
