Blue Black

Africa is known for its bold, unapologetic use of colour. Stories are told in pigments, tones and hues; a kaleidoscope as diverse as the cultures and peoples of the continent. For the initiative Colours of Africa, a collaborative project with Google Arts & Culture, we asked 60 African creatives to capture the unique spirit of their country in a colour which represents home to them.

The projects they have created are personal and distinct stories of Africa, put into images, videos, texts and illustrations. Each artist has also attempted to articulate what being African means to their identity and view of the world.

Colour:Blue-black
Country:South Sudan

Artwork rationale:

Blue-black has been used to describe very dark skin – a common characteristic of South Sudanese people. As a dark-skinned Black African person, I cannot disclaim, hide from, put on, or take off my Africanness. I had to confront the negative ways the world sees Africa too early and too often. The most shocking and painful realisation is that many Black people, and people of colour on the continent and beyond, have adopted this same gaze.

People talk about 'colourism', a term coined by the brilliant writer Alice Walker in 1982. But people also
find the word confusing and frustrating. I prefer 'afrophobia', which is the active distancing from the perceived
wretchedness of the deep, dark middle of Africa – where I'm from.

Making, watching and engaging films has been my way of grappling with afrophobia. I loved seeing very
dark-skinned Black people on the screen in films by Djibril Diop Mambety and Ousmane Sembene. I loved that
they did not fetishise, glamourise, victimise or render us abnormal.

I don't think that reversals are an effective way of attacking and dismantling the powerful and enduring
stereotypes about black people and Africa.
Because they say we are dirty, now we say we are clean.
Because they say we are stupid, now we declare we are smart.
Because they say we are guilty, now we all have to be innocent.
Because they say we are ugly, now we are all beautiful.
The stereotype renders us sub-human, and the reversal casts us as super-human. Both ways we lose our humanity.

UNTITLED (2018)

I don't only or ultimately want to be affirmed, to be happy, to feel good, or to be comfortable
I want to experience the fullness of my humanity
To be recognised in the fullness of my humanity
What hurts so much when you experience afrophobia in its countless manifestations
Is knowing that you have not been seen in the fullness of your humanity
Knowing that an aspect of the hatred is murderous
That people do not just hate you,
They don't want you to exist.
They pray that their children don't look like you.
They want to purge their countries of your kind.
You do not exist in their dreams of the future.
Sometimes you are melanin. You are magic. You are a mythical creature
Until you start to speak about the pain you have experienced as a dark-skinned black woman
Then you are crazy. You are divisive. You are jealous. You are silenced.
You need to learn to love yourself
Why are you so self-conscious? Why do you care so much about what people think about you?
We don't want to teach or preach any lessons
We want to be brave enough to face the things that cause us pain.
To ask our mothers and our aunties and our sisters and our daughters
What we can do to heal
We are seeking not only or ultimately affirmation, validation, beauty or good feelings,
We want to heal
And to be recognised in the fullness of our humanity.

A QUOTE FROM UMTHANDAZO BY JULIE NXADI
'We are not without sin
There are many things we have done in the name of being strong
This is us
We're ugly
But if we disgust you who made us lord
Then who will look at us'

What it means to be African

To be African has meant to be regarded through a narrow lens with room for only one thing at a time. Enduringly, this regard has included a comprehensive collection of least desirable things.

More recently, in attempts to challenge this gaze, we are now a vague collection of positive things. The flipping of the lens does not change the fact that it's narrow. In this paradigm there still seems to only be room for one thing at a time.

I look forward to the day when there is room for us to be more than one thing, to be regarded by others and to regard ourselves in the fullness of our humanity. To recognise what makes us beautiful, ugly, hopeful, despairing, justified, mistaken, the things that make us alike, the things that make us different and the universe of things in between.

Biography

Akuol Garang de Mabior is South Sudanese, was born in Cuba and grew up in Kenya. She has directed three short films: Tomato Soup(2017), Ihlazo (2017) and Fall into the Sky (2018). All three have screened at festivals and events around the world from the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa and the Durban International Film Festival in South Africa to the Pan African Film Festival in the USA.

She is currently working on her first feature-length documentary, Nyandeng, which received the New Perspectives Seed Fund (2020) from Doc Society, the Whickers Film and TV Funding Award (2020) and the IDFA Bertha Classic Fund (2020).

Believing that the perspectives of African women are undervalued, she aims to create stories for the screen that reach African audiences and encourage a renewed way of seeing African identities and futures.