Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
African American Studies
First Advisor
Lee, Pamela
Abstract
The dissertation proposes that black queer feminist conceptual tools are advantageous to interpreting modern and contemporary art. Utilizing visual analysis and interdisciplinary black feminist criticism to analyze artwork by Mildred Thompson, Simone Leigh, Wangechi Mutu, Zanele Muholi, Senzeni Marasela, and others, becomes a way through which to build the concept of black queer feminist errantry. Defined as a political, aesthetic, and intellectual mode through which artists enact practices of wandering, refusal, fabulation, and waywardness, black queer feminist errantry was developed with the work of several scholars in mind, such as Sarah Jane Cervenak, Tavia Nyong’o, and Saidiya Hartman. The preface, “In the Hand of Afrekete” introduces the pan-African water deity and character from Audre Lorde’s writing to develop a black lesbian lens rooted in spirituality and diaspora. Chapter one, “Looking for Mildred, Finding the Cosmos,” analyzes Mildred Thompson’s artwork with an emphasis on transnationalism, abstraction, and queer formalism. Chapter two, “Sweet Home: Visualizing Black Feminist Domesticity,” explores black women’s artistic practices within and concerning the home as a space marked by trauma, labor, care, and creativity. Chapter three, “Sculpting Black Beauty: Sovereignty and (Rest)itution in Public Art,” looks at Simone Leigh’s Brick House and Wangechi Mutu’s façade for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as COVID-era representations of beauty, loss, and the possibility of repair. The conclusion, “When and Where I Enter,” unpacks curatorial examples of black queer feminist errantry and reviews the dissertation’s political and aesthetic claims.
Recommended Citation
Thomas, Alexandra Monet, "Afrekete’s Touch: Black Queer Feminist Errantry and Global African Art" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1455.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1455
