Given the history of the hypersexualization of the black male body, is capturing the unclothed body about subverting that stereotyping? In a lot of your photography, the figure is a nude black male. It was so controversial for my little eyes! I will never forget that moment of encountering her work. In undergrad, one of my professors pulled up Renee Cox's Yo Mama (The Sequel), and it was one of the first times I've seen an artist use the black body in such transformative way. Is there a photographer that also informs your work? His comments endanger the lives of black women and queer people in order to uphold a construction of black masculinity that says we are hypersexual and hyper-violent beings. That's an example of the way a lot of men have been conditioned to perform ignorance and use accepted notions of masculinity to inflict violence on femme people. The comedian Lil Duval's comments where he said he would kill a trans woman if she did not disclose she was trans before intercourse. What is a recent image in pop culture that perpetuates toxic ideas of manhood? I'm using photography as a metaphor to describe black manhood. I think this show, This Was His Body/His Body Finally His, shows what I describe as a metaphoric process of reclaiming my sense of self, as a way to emerge from the messiness of childhood and the imagines that I have encountered that have disrupted my imagination. There was a moment when I realized that I wanted to use art to express my personal truth. That childhood tension, between who you are and who you are asked to be because of your body, seems to be a central question at the heart of your pictures. It was difficult because I was trying to figure out how to survive in my community, but also trying to learn how to be. But at the same time, behind close doors I was subverting a lot of that because I looked up to Brandy the most. I wanted his smoothness, that coolness a lot of black boys have that's seen in painters like Barkley L. I wanted to be a musician when I was kid and a lot of the ways I'd perform black masculine expression was through music or the hip-hop videos of rappers like DMX or Master P. I performed around these boys to try to fit in, but never really met the standard of what it meant to be black and masculine and ended up in isolation.ĭid you find in that isolation examples of black boys, men, or women who allowed you to feel accepted? Having to deal with that early on positions you to have to decide as a child if you want to "pass" into these spaces by wearing a false machismo or do you want to deal with the social consequences of being yourself. A lot of the boys I went to school with rejected anything they considered feminine or homosexual or outside of what it means to be a black man in their imagination. I was surrounded by a very specific black masculine performance. Shikeith Cathey: I grew up in North Philadelphia. In what ways does growing up black and queer inform who you are? VICE: These photographs take the intersection of black masculinity and queer identity as their subjects.
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