Funky Black Angels photo series by Tyrone Brown-Osborne
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Blackness is a construction, my black is different from your black and some people's black might actually be more white than black.
- Thelma Golden
This work explores the subtle nuances that exist beyond the surface of hyper-contextualized identity politics and asks what is essentially ‘individualistic...’ about acts of imitation, repetition and creation? It is an active look at the cultural and social context in which these artists have discovered the tools and identifications to create mature and independent self-actualizations. These photographs and their accompanying text engage the positive representations of individuals in pursuit of self-discovery and personal expression outside a world infused and codified by a culture of automation. This is our challenge and the one any artist faces who struggles against social stagnation. We have all profited from those self-made icons, many of whom later become the most neatly packaged commodities themselves, only to lose there fiercely fought for individuality in the downward spiral of mass consumption. What we see here in these images are people living in the affirmation of their life, they are for all intensive purposes swimming against an formidable current.
In our media dominated culture it has become increasingly difficult to discern the publicly constructed image from the personal truth of the individuals we are compelled to see. One wonders if they are retreating, unknowingly and imperceptibly out of our grasp. And to the measure that it can be said that people are known by their deeds so it can be plainly stated that artists are recognized by their creations. But for any artist to communicate effectively it is an imperative and essential process for that individual to establish a new and personal identity (voice) between themselves and their work, the work of others and a natural and coherent response to their public. But this is a painstaking work to undertake, ones whose outcome is uncertain and will undoubtedly be influenced by innumerable forces, many of which are not readily accessible through speech, but only in the transcribed expression of artistic creation. The primary task of any artist, if it can be done, is to engage life in an open dialogue, however arduous or unseemly the task.
Funky Black Angels are modern, self-described, and self-invented people who neither represent a definable demographic nor a single class of Americans. They are our undiscovered selves; the very dream of who we would have liked to become if the societal pull of dull and lamentable conformity where not placed upon us. We see them everywhere; we listen to them on our i-pods and in our homes on the television and yet they still inhabit the void, even within the larger communities in which they originate. Our culture has taught us to praise them once they have ‘arrived’ and yet they are betrayed by a rigid and inexplicable morality, defeated by the marketplace, which further seeks to reduce the highest possible variable into the least common denominator. To see a Funky Black Angel is to know that personal relevance is still possible, yet their image and its potential for social, political, and cultural redress is not so much a matter of your acceptance of theirs, but of your own.