montenez
lowery

A Darktown Cakewalk is a mixed media-based project that acts as a form of cultural preservation as I explore themes of loss, reclamation, and the significance of cultural artifacts in shaping personal and collective histories. 

The project asks the subject to provide an item that they personally experienced to be appropriated and or stripped of its original context. I then turn said black cultural objects (i.e Nike shoeboxes and Eco-Styler gel containers) into pinhole cameras to create portraits of Black Americans.

Through abstract pinhole photography and sound installation, the project critiques the cyclical nature of racism and cultural cannibalism, drawing inspiration from the minstrel show At A Darktown Cakewalk. Similar to the minstrel show's history, photography—a medium that historically discriminated against Black people, both as subject and photographer—erased Black agency by framing us as “other” or by mechanically restricting the very nature of capturing darker skin tones. My project attempts to appropriate and colonize the very instrument to fill the gaps in an archive caused by photography’s discriminatory history while highlighting the historical and current appropriation of Black culture and confronting the lingering effects of such acts on Black Americans today.