PAN-A-DNA is a moving image and photographic piece, exploring the various ways the perceived male, black body is depicted and viewed through the media and society and how those depictions and tropes influence my own and others perception of my identity as a black queer person.
The project is heavily inspired and works through the words of some of the greatest black theorists and thinkers such as bell hooks and the late great cultural theorist Stuart Hall who speaks of ‘black narcissus’ and how artists in the 90’s used themselves as a means to understand cultural representation and the white gaze.
‘A paradox ensues whereby blackness becomes a signifier of that which needs to be invisible, but is also negatively desired. The black man internalises the inscription of race on the skin, epidermalising this relation which casts him as other, inferior and invisible is his all-too-visible visibility. On the one hand, he is fixed “as a chemical solution is fixed by a dye” but on the other hand he becomes a projection screen onto which the various myths, fantasies and fears about the other are deposited in the bid to secure the white colonial subject.’ - Walsh, M., Art And Psychoanalysis.
RED: the blood that unites all people of Black African ancestry, and shed for liberation.
BLACK: black people whose existence as a nation, though not a nation-state, is affirmed by the existence of the flag.
GREEN: the abundant natural wealth of Africa.
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