Many activist graphics on Instagram are deeply indebted to the visual language developed by W.E.B. Du Bois in his data portraits and the long history of visual activism.
W.E.B. Du Bois
Posted inBooks
How W.E.B. Du Bois Meticulously Visualized 20th-Century Black America
The Pan-African scholar’s data visualizations about Black American progress after Emancipation have been compiled, for the first time, as a book.
Posted inArt
The Obama Portraits and the History of African American Portraiture
Like many African American portraitists, Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley represent the Obamas as themselves, and as more than themselves.
Posted inArt
In Paintings and Ceramics, Theaster Gates Salvages Charged Materials
In his new show at Regen Projects, Gates showcases paintings based on data visualizations by W.E.B. Du Bois and ceramic sculptures that reinterpret iconic forms.
Posted inBooks
Remixing the Resistant Voices of Black Musical Performance in the US
It’s easy to forget what an oddly heterogeneous and restless book is W.E.B Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk.
Posted inArt
W. E. B. Du Bois’s Modernist Data Visualizations of Black Life
For the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, African American activist and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois led the creation of over 60 charts, graphs, and maps that visualized data on the state of black life.