African American Artists Performing for the Camera After 1970: Against Transparency

This study demonstrates how African American artists active since the 1970s have instrumentalized performance for the camera to intervene in existing representations of Black and Brown people in America and beyond. Majewska argues that producing carefully designed photographs, films, and videos via performance became a key strategy for dismantling the conceptions of race and gender fixed by US popular culture, jurisprudence, and pseudoscience. Studying the work of Adrian Piper, Glenn Ligon, Lyle Ashton Harris, Senga Nengudi, Maren Hassinger, Howardena Pindell, David Hammons, and Pope.L, this book examines the ways in which these artists incorporate their bodies and personal experience into their respective performances, simultaneously courting and foreclosing autobiographical readings. The strategies examined here, while diverse, all challenge conventional interpretations of performance art—especially those overdetermined by race, gender, and sexuality. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, performance studies, photography, and African American studies.