By camouflage, green-screen pores and skin, and a uncooked, vibrant purple, Clarence Heyward’s gazes draw parallels between invisibility and violence projected onto Black males.
In a quiet nook of the Richard Beavers Gallery in Brooklyn, N.Y., proprietor Richard Beavers adjusted a projector, getting ready to showcase Clarence Heyward’s solo exhibit, American Fiction. The house, aside from his advertising affiliate, was empty—a becoming setting for a dialog about identification, notion, and the realities of Black males in America.
Beavers’s dedication to Black artwork moved him to name Clarence Heyward and focus on his exhibit, American Fiction for Sugarcane.
Heyward, a North Carolina-based artist, makes use of colour concept and composition to discover how society tasks its concepts onto Black males. His work, on show from Feb. 8-March 22, displays an inside perspective trying outward, difficult stereotypes and expectations.
American Fiction is a visible narrative of tragedy and resistance. In a single piece, a Black father units fireplace to the White Home in defiance of imperialism, leaving his daughters to rebuild. Whereas the sequence doesn’t explicitly critique gender roles, it highlights the expectations positioned on Black males with hanging depth.
All through the exhibit, Heyward’s figures, together with a inexperienced large, seem weary, their exhaustion as seen because the inexperienced hue coating their pores and skin. This colour alternative references chroma keying expertise—the “inexperienced display screen” generally utilized in movie and media—symbolizing how Blackness is formed by exterior narratives.
The less-than-jolly inexperienced large glares from giant canvases. He’s solely taking a look at you in America’s Most Needed, Tremendous-Villain, and NWA, by camouflage masks, and in American Fiction with a purple gasoline canister in entrance of a burning White Home. In We The Individuals and Sure, he’s not taking a look at all.
“Media, social media, films and TV use it [green screen] to form the notion of what’s actually there,” Heyward mentioned. “I take advantage of that as a metaphor for Blackness. I really feel like Blackness has been formed by the lens of the media. Individuals see Black individuals as they’ve been proven or informed we’re.”
His work depict males staring by camouflage masks, gripping a gasoline canister earlier than a burning White Home, or trying away totally. By green-screen pores and skin and vivid reds, he connects themes of invisibility and violence, illustrating the stress between identification and notion.
The aftermath of American Fiction is implied in The Fireplace Subsequent Time, the place Black girls are left to bear the implications of destruction. Ought to they rebuild or demand one thing higher? If revolution is critical, who pays the value?
Heyward’s Memorial Day completes the sequence, prominently that includes retro Air Jordan 1s in Gymnasium Pink—a logo of each Black cultural identification and the stereotypes that confine it. American Me continues this theme, depicting a susceptible Black man behind the American flag and the masks he wears to navigate society.
His work doesn’t condemn these representations however acknowledges them, highlighting the stress between self-definition and societal expectation. To be passively Black is to just accept stereotypes; to be actively Black is to outline oneself regardless of them. This philosophy aligns with the African philosophy of ubuntu: “I’m as a result of we’re.”
In American Me, Heyward appears to be like again whereas being seen. His pessimistic martyrdom fantasy means that African American males’s function is dying for the long run they’ll’t be a part of. His work questions whether or not Black males should all the time sacrifice themselves for a future they received’t be a part of. Who calls for this sacrifice?
“She’s certain to the home, so she doesn’t have sneakers on her toes,” Heyward says of 1 piece. “Her job is to look after the children whereas I go away. And I’m the sacrifice.”
A Black individual’s sacrifice is a self-destructive custom. The normal Black man is patriarchal. A patriarch maintains the nuclear household and is the first authority in the established order. The nuclear household, which dates again to Thirteenth-century England, grew common within the Fifties.
Black males have lengthy been forged as protectors, certain to an outdated patriarchal excellent. However what if fireplace, as an alternative of destroying, may heat a house, sear a healthful meal, bridge vulnerability within the warmth of a hug or ignite hope? Heyward’s artwork means that Black males should not characters in a predetermined story. They’ve the ability to reside for his or her communities somewhat than die for them.
Why be inexperienced whenever you might be Black?
American Fiction | Clarence Hayward on view at Richard Beavers Gallery in Brooklyn till March 22, 2025.
