In AfroPunk:
Image courtesy of Modise Sepeng
The Afrocentric aesthetic has become a cliché within itself. It's been muffled with defunct and ill-informed iconography and filled to brim with afros, fists and animal prints referenced from overly exhausted templates that expired lifetimes ago. For countless centuries the creative products of Africans have been ornamental to the lives of middle classed Europeans with postcard knowledge of their origins. With our cultural symbols being diluted and simplified to match the drapes of the disinterested tourists who consume them. A captivating movement of young black illustrators, alternative designers and urban artists has recently emerged South Africa; and it aims to remedy the semiotic misconceptions of Africa by redefining Afrocentrism one pixel at a time. No more shall Africa be enlisted as an influence in the footnotes of visual history. Our story will be read in our own fonts and embellished in our own imagery. We refuse to let our environment be prescribed by diasporic and colonial pasquinades about our nature. Africa has a dynamic new face, and these are the young names behind it...[continue reading]
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