Last Sunday ARTNOIR, an organization that supports the freedom of artistic expression for all hosted several events in collaboration with the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair at Pioneer Works’ artspace in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Kicking off day was a Moët Hennessy brunch where French 75 signature cocktails were served paired with light appetizers. Following the brunch was an imitate conversation with renowned curator and author, Shantrelle P. Lewis on her new book “Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style.” The talk was moderated by curator, cultural critic and cofounder of ARTNOIR, Larry Ossei-Mensah who serves also serves as the co-chair on Russell Simmons’ RUSH Artist Advisory Board, the Guggenheim’s Young Collectors Council and MoMA’s Friends of Education. After the discussion guests were given a private VIP tour of the fair.
“Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style” can be preordered now for it’s May, 19th release date on aperture.org. The 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair is at the forefront in contemporary African art and returned to New York for its third edition on May 5-7th, 2017 while this October will mark its fifth London edition.
Check out our exclusive highlights of the Q&A:
Ossei-Mensah: Why did you choose to take on this project? And what gave you the courage to say that this needs to be seen and shared?
Lewis: Honestly, it wasn’t something in terms of Dandyism, it wasn’t something I was very conscious of. I grew up in New Orleans. Coming to Howard University introduced me to the larger diaspora, particularly the black diaspora I thought to be southern was quite different than that of New York. I remember guys on campus wearing really tightly starched jabots and dudes from New York and Boston wearing baggy jeans and tims with oversized shirts which was very much in contrast from what people were wearing from the South. I was always considering what it mean to be from New Orleans and to be black and from the South within this larger framework of the Diaspora even within Afro-America. Dressing up was just what we did. We did it on Sundays, we did it for Easter. We had an outfit for church and after church. I was always exposed to this idea of men dressing up, particularly in my family. In 2010 when Ngozi Odita, one of our good friends from Harriet’s Alter Ego invited me to curate a pop-up exhibition, I was really considering a couple things like what she was doing in terms of fashion in Brooklyn in the early 2000s. What’s hip today in Brooklyn, Harriet’s Alter Ego was at the forefront of that. The natural hair movement and wearing African print before it was really a thing or cool to do. I was considering how style was being defined by these black people and how do we celebrate the diversity of black manhood. So I had to go back into my roots and that’s wear I think ‘Dandy Lion’ began.
Ossei-Mensah: So how did you choose photography specifically to be the medium to explore, investigate and share?
Lewis: I’m partial to photography thanks, Dr. Deb Willis and all of the work she’s done. It was the first exhibition I curated at The African American Museum at the photography show. Terrence Jennings, Jamel Shabazz, Ayana Jackson and all these heavy hitting photographers who besides Jamel were at the beginning of their career. I was always partial to photography as a medium and the ways that it always moved me in the way we have always been able to tell our stories. It’s also very literal. When thinking about contemporary Dandyism, I even have to reference W. E. B. Du Bois in his exhibition in Paris in which he had this extensive exhibition of portraits of black people. It was a response to black people being lynched, as buffoons and the minstrel figures. To talk about black men and black masculinity it’s very literal because the images that you see on television and magazines, on “most wanted” ads billboards and different cities and in the news- those are very literal images, like photography. And so I didn’t want to have a very abstract conversation about black masculinity in a contemporary context. I wanted to have a very literal conversation.
Ossei-Mensah: And so the pop-up show was in Harlem at the very original museum space which I actually had the opportunity to exhibit this year and so just kind of knowing the history of the space- you did the exhibition wildly successfully, what was the impetus for you to say “We need to take this on the road and other communities need to see this work?”
Lewis: Honestly, it wasn’t even me. As you know as a curator the glory is not always there, we have moments that are great but the behind the scenes life of a curator- I have no words. I would have definitely run the exhibition a long time ago but just trying to get photographs, bios and artist statements and images can be a little challenging, to say the least but it was honestly the response from the community. I knew that Dandyism is a thing. Of course Monica Miller who is a professor at Barnard wrote “Slaves to Fashion” which brilliantly articulates the trajectory of the historical of Black Dandy from its 17th century predecessor and Daniele Tamagni did “Gentlemen of Bacongo” but I think it was a largely ignored subculture within hip-hop but people were so thirsty for positive images of black men that MoCADA wanted to show, the original Louis Museum wanted to show, Amsterdam, and The Museum of Contemporary Photography and it kept growing so really it just shows you how thirsty we are as a community to see more nuance images of ourselves than the very monolithic image of ourselves that exists in popular culture and media.
Photos courtesy of Antoine Reid (@noemadnyc on social media).
