A postcolonial reading of selected afterimages of atrocities in Africa from 1994-2013

Abstract

This research examined and critiqued selected afterimages of African atrocities, namely, apartheid (1948-1994), the Rwandan Genocide (1994) and the Democratic Republic of Congo Wars (1998-2003) through a Black gaze. The aforementioned atrocities are positioned as forms of cultural trauma that are historically catastrophic events emanating from colonial legacies that linger and shape the present. My investigation and analysis aimed to foreground and visually characterise the visual phenomenon that I describe as the spectacle of the black body in pain. This is a social phenomenon anchored in unethical visual practice by White or Western artists indulging in culturally insensitive conduct by exploiting and commodifying brutalised, mutilated, dead and decomposing black bodies as artworks positioned for aesthetic pleasure. This cultural insensitivity demonstrates a lack of respect for and/or understanding of local customs and cultural differences.

The Black gaze is an oppositional gaze to the racist hegemonic white gaze that manifests concatenation of symbols and narratives that specify the spectacle of the body in pain. The concept of the Black gaze in this study is influenced by Postcolonial African Trauma theory, Africanfuturism, and Black Consciousness perspectives, both conceptually and philosophically. The Black gaze emanates from Blackness. To understand Blackness, one must embed it within the history of modernity, and the totality of its fragments of conquest and exploitation. The vantage point of continental African and African American history, Western humanism, racial slavery and racial capitalism are cauldrons in which the idea of Black difference is rooted. This includes the myriad of responses to its systems of oppression, forms of resistance and voicing. My specific focus is on the representational strategies and explicit violent visual regimes utilised to portray the trauma of postcolonial African atrocity on black bodies. I theorise that the black African body has endured constant violence and continues to be visually constructed as existing outside the realm of humanity, even in the postcolonial era.

The eight artworks analysed in this study were produced from 1994 to 2013 by a diverse group of African, Diasporic and Western established artists, namely, Colin Richards (1996), Judith Mason (1998), Rafiki Ubaldo (1994), Richard Mosse (2011; 2012) and the international non-profit human rights organisation, WITNESS (2005). My critique focuses on the stereotypical, objectifying and sensationalist gaze applied in the depiction of traumatised black bodies using the persistent and presumptive notions that portray Africa as an exotic hinterland.