The Hodge Show's Blog

I’m familiar with these amazing artist so I take for granted that you might not know who these guys are .Otabenga Jones & Associates is an organization founded by Otabenga Jones(a fictional character) and whose other members(associates) include artists(real people) Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Jamal Cyrus, Kenya Evans, and Robert A. Pruitt (the latter four are also in the 2006 Biennial, independent of the organization). The group works under the tutelage of Mr. Jones, who is named after Ota Benga, the African Pygmy brought to the United States in 1904 and later exhibited at the Bronx Zoo, and this historical reference to the pseudoanthro-pological penchant for exhibiting Africans and other non-Western peoples in world’s fairs and other such exhibitions of the time is an indicator of the group’s intent. Their pedagogical mission, realized in the form of actions, writings, and installations, is to highlight the complexities of representation across the African diaspora; to establish a cross-generational aesthetic continuum stemming from the transatlantic experience; and, as they write in their mission statement, quoting from Sam Greenlee’s classic satirical novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1969), “to mess wit’ whitey.”

The Opening at HMAAC was a surprisingly refreshing experience.When you approach the Museum you are welcomed by sand bags outside the space randomly displaying the logo of the collective .The idea of the show is re- introducing the idea of doing for self. Pruitt said ” we always look back for strategies of the 60′s, 70′s sort of black radical organizations”. There was a strong foundation created with how to rebuild and educate within our own communities and OJ & Associates have sacrificed their own personal work with a conceptual replacement that allows the community to create the work that will essentially materialize the project. Pruitt referenced the Black Arts Movement , usually referred to as a “sixties” movement, coalesced in 1965 and broke apart around 1975/1976. In March 1965 following the 21 February assassination of Malcolm X, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) moved from Manhattan’s Lower East Side (he had already moved away from Greenwich Village) uptown to Harlem, an exodus considered the symbolic birth of the Black Arts movement. Jones was a highly visible publisher (Yugen and Floating Bear magazines, Totem Press), a celebrated poet (Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note, 1961, and The Dead Lecturer, 1964), a major music critic (Blues People, 1963), and an Obie Award-winning playwright (Dutchman, 1964) who, up until that fateful split, had functioned in an integrated world. Other than James Baldwin, who at that time had been closely associated with the civil rights movement, Jones was the most respected and most widely published Black writer of his generation. This spirit of community involvement is embodied at Fort HMAAC through the artists who will offer drawing, painting, poetry , design and sculpture classes , but you have to apply for admission(serious inquiries only) which will actually graduate students with a OJ& Associates degree . how dope is that. the exhibition is curated by Danielle Burns and officially kicks off the HMAAC Museum. I’m sure the show will be up at least three months so make sure you go and maybe partake in some classes at Fort HMAAC. When I think of a quote to sum up this exhibition I’m struck with the quote “Each One Teach One”. I left out some key pictures on purpose because you have to experience this in the flesh!