Happy Black History Month!!!
If you’ve been reading my blog you know that I’ve been sharing a lot about how art connects us to ourselves, our communities and others. This connection includes Black history. Every one of us connects to Black History Month differently, but I think it’s important that we all take the opportunity to learn about Black History and experience it through art.
This month I’ll be bringing a new iteration of my X Speaks performance art/ social practice project to Cairo’s Contemporary Image Collective. In collaboration with dozens of Cairenes, we’ll be performing/ presenting Malcolm X’s Appeal to African Heads of State – a letter he submitted to the Organization of African Unity when he visited Cairo in 1964. You can see a clip of an interview Malcolm X did with Milton Henry on the Nile River following the OAU meeting here on my blog.
Through experiencing my artwork, it’s important to me that you move from awareness to deeper levels of connection – even to the relevance of history in our present moment. The most passionate point that Malcolm X drills in in his Appeal to African Heads of State is that we are all connected and that if Black people have a problem (due to racist oppression in particular), then we all have a problem that must be solved together. No one of us should carry such a heavy burden on our own, and each of us deserves to be treated with humanity by our human collective. We are all worth celebrating. This month let’s focus on celebrating Black History in a more personal way.
Below is a new drawing from my Sajda series. In case you missed my weekly newletter with drawings from this series, you can sign up for my newsletter and catch up here.
Nsenga Knight 2021, (from the Sajda series), Charcoal on Paper, 5.5 x 8.5 x 0.1 in
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Below are three featured photographs and signed limited edition prints on my website:
(l-r) Nsenga Knight 2018, Tawaf/ Sa’y: Mankind, 22.5 x 22.5 inches, Oilstick and Gesso on Vegetable Parchment Paper (available as Limited Ed Print); Nsenga Knight 2011, Plateaus #1 32 x 40 inches inches, Archival Inkjet Print; Nsenga Knight 2016, As the Veil Turns, 30 x 20 inches, 35mm photography/ Archival Inkjet Print
Purchase my available art, read my most recent blog post: Knowing Black Muslim Women Through Art and learn more about me and my artwork here: on my website.
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