capsize
airbrush and oil on canvas, 54 X 36 inches • movie stills from the 1967 film Dutchman based on #AmiriBaraka 's play of the same title, in which a black man and a white woman's intimately sexual New York City subway ride becomes a metaphor for the violence and brutality of race relations in 1964's #America - a metaphor still relevant to this day and made only sharper by current criticism of the sexist narrative roles of the play. The stills are obscured by a centralized depiction of an #Akan crown made of velvet and wood covered with gold leaf, a signifier of manhood and power originating in #Ghana and influenced by western colonialism with its adoption of symbolism after first contact in the 15th century.