Dawolu Jabari Anderson
Dawolu Jabari Anderson’s fifth solo exhibition in four years weaves a tight-knit personal narrative out of a Texan, African-American perspective and marks a departure from his experience as a member of collective Otabenga Jones and Associates, though he remains a member of the group. Following a protagonist named MAM-E on her intergalactic adventures, Anderson reimagines classic comic-book covers as large paintings on paper that chart her exploits FROM GEO’GIA TO GALAXIES, as noted in one drawing. With blaring titles, foreshortened action, snappy dialogue, and teasing asides, he channels Jack Kirby’s talent for stimulating attention. His layered and scoured surfaces recall those of Michael Ray Charles, whose influence is also felt in Anderson’s ironic skewering of historical images, racist illustrations, and stereotypical advertisements.
Repelling Kool Aid Man in Pig Knuckles Served with a Punch? (all works 2009), MAM-E turns from her stove, still clutching a frying pan full of bacon, to plant a fist in his face. From Walt Disney’s 1946 Song of the South to Richard Wright’s 1940 Native Son, every reference in Anderson’s continuing series, titled the “Gullah Sci-Fi Mysteries,” alludes to historical facts and fictions. A satire of African-American caricatures, MAM-E is a fiery-eyed Hattie McDaniel wielding a broom and wearing a plaid blouse, apron, and bandanna. She battles a myriad of xenophobic characters, including Uncle Remus, Tar Baby, and Bigger Thomas. In The Big Change, MAM-E tears through a background of row houses to confront a cadre of her enemies under blue moonlight, her broom metamorphosed into a silver scepter.
Interspersed with Anderson’s paintings is a series of ink drawings on two-ply vellum. Background figures are seen through translucent leaves; the New York Post’s recent dead-ape cartoon is presented alongside depictions of Africans boiling English explorers, eugenic skull comparisons, Toussaint L’ouverture, and MAM-E herself. Bringing to mind the historical details in Kara Walker’s antebellum nightmares, Anderson’s characters create an ever more vicious interpretation of history with every second glance. In concurrence with a writer who took on southern society in his own time, Anderson reopens his own life to reveal that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
