Africobra and the Negotiation of Visual Afrocentrisms

In: Civilisations: d'anthropologie et de sciences humaines, Band 58, S. 21-38

Abstract

In the 1960s, Africobra, a group of African-American artists in Chicago, experimented with art that synthesized African and African-American forms with interpretative visions of an African Diaspora. Africobra mandated a functional program for art-making in which art was to instruct in the beauty of a universal Black culture. Their imagery predates publication of Molefi Asante's "Afrocentricity" yet negotiates in visual terms Afrocentric tendencies present throughout African American cultural historiography. Still working in the present day, Africobra emphasizes the moral value of the creative process for the individual African American artist within an Afrocentric paradigm. In so doing, Africobra attempts recapture in an American context, the power of definition over art and identity exercised for centuries by dominant culture. Adapted from the source document.