The first label of contemporary artwork is the Post–Black aesthetic, through the works of two renowned artists going by the name of Fred Wilson and Kara Walker. These two artists intended to showcase their work by challenging hegemonic representations through appropriations of the racial stereotypes existing within the American culture. In the late ’90s, there was a generation of Africa American artists exploring techniques of representation through their photography, drawings, site-specific installations, and painting. These artworks addressed the social cultural and psychological proportions of blackness within the post-modern society. The African American community’s economic disruption was sparked by a social dialect that mainly reflected the symptomatic form of racism within the dominating society. The emergence of the hip-hop culture, in the music industry, masked a true representation of black people, by way of circulation of racist images, that portrayed the black man as a criminal or hypersexual.
Another label is OkayAfrica’s 100 Women, owned by a renowned artist Lina Viktor, whose women exhibit women making great impacts in the African continent and in the Diaspora. Her work is mesmerizing with a certain striking palette of black, white, and blue with her 24-karat gold as her trademark. While the stark hues of the shimmering gold are alluring, there is a relevance of her work to the black woman, history, and identity seduction. The artists’ paintings are multiverse in their own right. Her artwork is compiled of sole figures, standing before ornate like galaxy patterns. The pose is often accompanied by serene facial expressions, informing us of black womanhood being infinite.
