KCET Applauds Tisa Bryant and Afrofuturism

At KCET Los Angeles, Kenya Davis-Hayes takes a close look at "The Hybridized Writings of Tisa Bryant." Bryant, Davis-Hayes writes "simultaneously draws from a various literary tradition in order to construct a basically futuristic approach to research and writing." From the beginning:

Tisa Bryant's work defies time. As a critical studies faculty member at Cal Arts in Valencia, Bryant's work and pedagogy center around the fluidity of time, space and the meaning of race. Noted for her book, "Unexplained Presence," Bryant can be counted among the Southern California creatives who are influenced by Afrofuturism, though she might not readily define herself in that way. Traditionally, Afrofuturism has been defined as the intersection of blackness and technology as found in works of literature, particularly science fiction. But as the concept continues to take shape, more artists, musicians and writers are integrating the notion that Afrofuturism, as Chardine Taylor-Stone writes in the Guardian, also goes beyond spaceships, androids and aliens, and encompasses African mythology and cosmology with an aim to connect those from across the Black diaspora to their forgotten African ancestry." It is the genre-bending writings of Bryant which embody just this notion of connecting the African diasporic past with both its present and its future.

Within Bryant's 2007 text, "Unexplained Presence," she explores the presence of Black subjects in the background of noted artistic and literary pieces. She says she's drawn to the "little change in how Black people are regarded [in texts]: lazy, immoral, etc." She also focuses within her work on the muted nature of Black images in the history of European art. An example is S.H. Grimm's 1771 "Drolleries" with the caption, "Heyday! Is this my DAUGHER ANNE." Within this illustration, a well-dressed lady with a sky-high wig capped with a hat meets her mother followed by a Black footman carrying a small dog.

In "Unexplained Presence" she writes:

An old woman in a humble cloak stops, thunderstruck, at the sight of a euphemisitic "lady of fashion," emerging from an avenue of lindens.

Behind her trails a black page in ornate suiting, a plumed turban on his head, her lapdog tucked in his arms. He, too, is the mark of fashion among such of the period, who promoted their charms within sight of the well-heeled.

The lady's hair is teased to an exaggerated height that rises into the trees. At the summit of her coiffure sits a ribboned hat. The old woman must lean back and scope with her hand cupped around her eye in order to take it all in. Her wrinkled hand reaches for her heart in dismay. Her mouth drops open.

"Heyday!" reads the caption. "Is this my daughter Anne?"

Historically, Bryant asserts, scholars considered Black subjects in the backgrounds of European images as insignificant. "The history of being seen in the background has [had] a psychic effect on the Black community," she says. Her book grants a voice to the allegedly unexplained presence of blackness in European art and moves the subjects into the foreground of academic exchange and discourse.

Learn more at KCET.