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The Topic Is Race; the Art Is Fearless | The Topic Is Race; the Art Is Fearless |
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| Written by Foresight | |
| Sunday, 30 March 2008 | |
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IN the 1970s the African-American artist Adrian Piper donned an Afro
wig and a fake mustache and prowled the streets of various cities in
the scowling, muttering guise of the Mythic Being, a performance-art
version of a prevailing stereotype, the black male as a mugger,
hustler, gangsta. In the photographs that resulted you can see what she was up to. In an era when some politicians and much of the popular press seemed to be stoking racial fear, she was turning fear into farce — but serious, and disturbing, farce, intended to punch a hole in pervasive fictions while acknowledging their power. Recently a new kind of Mythic Being arrived on the scene, the very opposite of the one Ms. Piper introduced some 30 years ago. He doesn’t mutter; he wears business suits; he smiles. He is by descent half black African, half white American. His name is Barack Obama. The Topic Is Race; the Art Is Fearless Comments
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Copyright 2007. All Rights Reserved. |
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