Joshua Obichere

Take Me To Freedom, MA Fine Art, Runner Up, 2024

My work challenges the way the viewer sees Black masculinity when faced with the colonial history and realities of the Black male body. It’s an installation piece in the form of a skeletal timber ship, incorporating sound, performance, a painting as a sail and an embroidery piece, displayed separately.

Through my own lived experience as a Black queer man, having to navigate a world where my body is hyper-sexualised, I took inspiration from other Black queer male performance artists. As an expressive art form, I wanted to use performance to communicate matters of limitation attached to the Black male body. Tackling racial prejudices, while drawing relationships with enslavement, artists such as Carlos Martiel and Sherman Flemming have inspired me to be bold; my story speaks for many Black men, especially in queer spaces.

This work will allow the audience to step back and realise the colonial ideals that we subconsciously feed into about Black masculinity. It’s vital to change the narrative given to Black queer men and Black men in general without the stereotypes. The production process includes constructing the skeleton of a ship bow and prow from timber; this relates to the historical context of the transatlantic slave trade. The ship bow and prow will act as a stage for performance (on the CSM Fountains) – choreographed by me and my friend, who’s also Black and queer. Through movement and form, we’ll synchronise to a sound piece that combines vocals, instrumentals and poetry that I’ve written. In the backdrop will be the sail – a 3m-long painting in oils. Inside the street there will be a fabric piece with skin-like black fabric threaded through with white, beige cord rope and a large angle-ground steel needle.

I want this work to help audiences recognise the colonial history attached to the Black body but also the liberation, being detached from stereotypes that try to restrain the Black body especially among queer spaces. Additionally, I want people to find liberation from situations which made them feel restrained, and also gain from this installation performance.

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