Bey does not simply document Black life, but Black existence in a nation-state built upon the creation and maintenance of our subjugation.

Zoe Samudzi
Zoé Samudzi is a writer and doctoral student living in Oakland.
Photography From Africa that Refuses Easy Narratives
Africa State of Mind does not pander to expectations audiences might have or desire of African artists, instead allowing for these artists from 11 different countries to devise their own frameworks for understanding the places they are from.
A Caribbean Present Steeped in a Colonial Past
In Coffee, Rhum, Sugar & Gold: A Postcolonial Paradox, ten artists explore the implications of colonialism’s violent legacy.
Sadie Barnette’s Homage to Her Father and the First Black-Owned Gay Bar in San Francisco
Sadie Barnette mines memories to turn them into glittering, physical spaces. Her latest installation, The New Eagle Creek Saloon, is a recreation of the gay bar her father ran in the early ’90s.
A Close Reading of Slave Play Interrogates the Burden of Interracial Trauma
Why must we depict Black characters as eventually reconciling their contempt for whiteness with a prevailing, individual romance that conquers that disdain?