Ever see a geisha with an Afro or a samurai smoking a blunt? These strange subjects appear in works by Iona Rozeal Brown. Brown, a Washington D.C. based artist, explores the Japanese appropriation of Hip Hop culture in her paintings in the MATRIX 152 exhibit, currently showing at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. In the early 1990s, Brown read about the ganguro, a Japanese youth subculture that emulates the style of American Hip Hop by wearing Hip Hop clothes, “perming” their hair into Afros, and even darkening their skin. Several years later, she began creating images inspired by the ganguro.
Intrigued by the ganguro, Brown began a series of paintings which she titled a3 blackface. The series explores the relationship between Japanese culture and Hip Hop, and comments on cultural appropriation in general through her “afro-asiatic allegory” (“a3”).
Brown’s paintings address the ganguro by imposing elements of Hip Hop culture upon traditional Japanese prints. She employs the style of ukiyo-e, seventeenth century woodcuts of geishas, samurai, and kabuki actors, but alters the figures to reflect twenty-first century Hip Hop. Untitled I (Female) (2003), depicts a geisha whose kimono has loosened to reveal her shoulder, a common ukiyo-e subject in a typical pose. Brown maintains the aesthetic of woodcuts in this work, a color silkscreen, by defining the figure with lines and planes of color. She darkens the geisha’s typically pale skin into blackface. While she preserves the figure’s original hairline, Brown gives the geisha dreadlocks and sticks an afro pick and a Japanese hair pin into them. Most of the a3 blackface series depict women, since they are frequently subjects of ukiyo-e and are the main purveyors of ganguro style.
In her talk at the opening of the exhibit, Brown recounted a visit she made to Japan in search of ganguro. She said that the ones who she met seemed more interested in Hip Hop as a fashion statement than as a culture, having spent the great sums on imported clothing and hair styling. The artist seemed upset more about the ganguro’s materialism than about their involvement with hip hop (she makes similar criticism of mainstream commercial hip hop in a new series entitled “w. o. i. m. s.” which is also showing in MATRIX 152
The a3 blackface series addresses cultural appropriation in general, using the ganguro merely as an example. In some of the works, Brown includes references to the Wu-Tang clan, a NYC-based group of MCs who relate the martial arts lifestyle typical of kung-fu movies to their own experience in urban ghettos. Wu-Tang’s version of martial arts philosophy, like the ganguro’s version of Hip Hop, is not entirely based on reverence and understanding. When asked about the appropriation within her own work, Brown expressed her interest in Eastern culture and said that she thought ukiyo-e was appropriate for addressing the ganguro. She acknowledges that the interaction between cultures leads to mutual influences, which may not stay true to the original form.
Iona Rozeal Brown’s exhibit will be showing until June 13, 2004. The Art History Department will arrange a trip to the Wadsworth Atheneum before the end of the semester.
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