Smokestacks In The Distance: Environmental Racism, Afrofuturism, And Najee Dorsey’s "Poor People’s Campaign" by Faron Manuel
"It’s not necessarily that my work deals in duality -- it only appears that way when you reveal what’s hidden in plain sight" -Najee Dorsey
Grappling with the major environmental issues of today and their centralized effects on poor and African American communities, the series Poor People’s Campaign by Najee Dorsey, evokes both Afrofuturist and southern nostalgic themes, to render what, in Dorsey’s estimation— “could potentially be our shared future.” This body of work presents a challenge to general notions of the Afrofuturist imagination by grounding visuals of a more recognizable future in present conditions and forecasting possibilities to come. Evolving his approach to digital collage, Dorsey uses original, candid photographs to forge his vision. He highlights the harmful yet normalized environmental factors that we as a society have grown accustom. Using the south as a point of departure, these works depict Dorsey’s somewhat distant vision of a future that remains true to southern narratives in rural landscapes.
Known as a painter and collagist, Dorsey embraced the idea of creating art in the digital space in 2010 and began experimenting with the medium after buying a printer to make edition art prints. He states, “my first impression of digital art was that it was ‘cheating’.” “Working in this medium, I soon realized that it required the same application of color, line, texture, as with any other media. It was just another vehicle for my artistic expression.” Accepting his new media approach, he completed the Resistance series (2011 - 2012) -- a body of work inspired by the history of protests against “the powers that be” (Hill, 2013) on a range of different social issues in the United States. In an artist talk on the works, at Syracuse University’s Community Folk Art Center, Dorsey detailed his then recently evolved views on working in digital—simply stating, “If you think it’s easy, try it!” This body of work [Resistance] was composed of images made with a mix of old and new media techniques anchored in painting and collage. After beginning digital work, he would emphasize his painting and collaging by hand and infuse these staple approaches into his digital collage pieces representing a reluctance to let his digital work stand on its own.
Though the art world at large has been slow to embrace new media out right, Dorsey has grown ever more comfortable with making in the digital space. The Poor People’s Campaign, a series of complexly layered collages, challenges notions of both artistic production and Afrofuturism. They are devoid of any manual embellishments, painting or found objects. Dorsey’s first totally digital body of work that is, pays special attention to providing and evoking a sense of texture and depth to a medium that is generally regarded to produce ‘flat’ images. Works in this new series are centered original candid photographs featuring children. —Those images visually convey a natural setting, that alludes to times past and times to come. Named for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign (King, 2010, p.xx), works in the series connects King’s fervent struggle against what he deemed “the triple evils…of racism, materialism, and militarism,” (King, 2010, p.xvi) iniquities that are highlighted symbolically in several of the works throughout the series. King’s original campaign focused on freedom and justice and this campaign focuses on environmental racism and environmental justice.
Though this new body of work recalls similar themes of locality and social concern found throughout Dorsey’s artistic practice, the ways in which the candid figures are centralized gives voice to the common individuals—enabling the everyman/woman/child to participate in the dialogues that are necessary to revitalize the community.
These fragmented renderings of youths, posited essentially in a post apocalyptic wasteland, brings the viewer to reckon with “what’s happening in plain sight.” With works like Southern Futurist Over Civil War Soil (2019) highlighting not only the effects of war and unhinged destruction of our environment, but also forecasts attempts to hold on to past and current racial arrangements long into the future. The cast of candid figures, foregrounding smoldering forestry, toxic plumes and chemical emissions saturating the air, a toppled Civil War monument among the heaping debris, all gives way to a visually captivating narrative about a possible future. Augmented with heavy layering and color saturation, the complexly digitally collaged figures complete this image and sustains a narrative speaks to the detailed meticulousness of Dorsey’s new media works.
In digital, Dorsey’s approach to figuration is grounded in posture and body language. He overlays like poses from various subjects from either sourced or original photographs, to establish integral figures—imbuing them with very pronounced personalities. In the construction of these figures, great attention is payed to wardrobe, as Dorsey uses dress to signify time and status—bearing in mind that these ensembles are largely birthed out of the artist’s imagination. His building of anatomy and wardrobe to convey time and persona can be gleaned in Southern Futurist Over Civil War Soil (2019). Closely observed, the girl clad in red, black, and green attire becomes a composite figure. Her attire, the result of Dorsey’s artistic license, is an interpretation of casual dress in a distant time. Transposing the candid figure into a new environment and assigning a role within that environment, establishes a totally new identity for the subject. The natural air of the candid figures in this body of work maintains the innocence of childhood in a visible way.
Poor Peoples Campaign is a loose narrative, focused on recurring figures, and a shared environment in various degrees of decay. Very much in step and within the range of social and aesthetic commitments in Dorsey’s general body of work. These images also pay homage to his personal history and artistic influences. Dorsey, states how in his work, “I want to be true to the themes of my work, southern culture, family…it’s about how we live, the environment, there’s a certain nostalgia to it,” (Dorsey, 2018)—mirroring one of his greatest artistic influences, Romare Bearden, a master collagist, who also drew on recurring imagery, folklore from his upbringing, and rituals of community life. (Holmes, 2017) With works like Conjur Making That Long Arduous Access to Something Universal (2019), highlights the power of faith and the collective imagination to overcome despair. Dorsey has presented the Conjur Woman as a recurring figure and spiritual force in a number works over the years—noting how her presence in his work has always served as a nod to Bearden.
Though it may not be apparent at a glance, Poor Peoples Campaign is imbued with elements of Dorsey’s personal narrative and family history. As Summer (2019) which centers three youths, two on bikes, and a third preparing for a swim in a polluted lake tells a part of the artist’s story. Panning away from these central figures, the source of the lake’s defacement is revealed in the distance—a lakeside factory with a steady flow of emissions rushing from its smokestack. According to the artist, this factory in the distance is a sourced image of a sugar refinery in Napoleonville, Louisiana—an image he came across while tracing some of his family roots to a sugar plantation in the area.
According to Dr. Robert Bullard, Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University:
Many of the polluting industries are located next to African American communities that were settled by former slaves—areas that were unincorporated and in which land was cheap. Local residents had few political rights (most blacks were denied the right to vote or to hold public office). Although the promise of jobs was the selling point for industries coming to towns along the Mississippi River, only a few jobs were offered to African American residents—and these were usually the lowest paying and dirtiest jobs.
Louisiana is a poor state. However, many of the giant corporations that operate get special tax breaks. For example, thirty large corporations—many of which are major polluters—received $2.5 billion in Louisiana property-tax exemptions in the 1980s. (Bullard, 2000, p.105)
Given the personal nature of some of the elements in the work, the facts bear out that Poor People’s Campaign sheds light on the environmental realities of African American and poor communities across the United States. In personalizing the works, Dorsey notes how the series is grounded in a possible future and serves as a challenge to issues of climate change. He still received much of his inspiration from children at leisure and landscapes in these works from the scenes he saw growing up in Blytheville, Arkansas. Noting how, “there is not much representation of the south in Afrofuturist creations.”
In the works, the interplay between the nostalgic and the Afrofuturist—and leisure in the midst of despair, evokes notions of duality. Dorsey insists that “it’s not necessarily that my work deals in duality…it only appears that way when you reveal what’s hidden in plain sight.” As he desired to create a body of work that gave southern black folks a voice in the Afrofuturist genre. As a cultural aesthetic, the concept of Afrofuturism has long been a part of Black popular culture—the term “Afrofuturism” was coined in 1994 by Mark Dery. (Scott, 2019) Dery making the observation that,
“...few African Americans write science fiction, a genre whose close encounters with the other—the stranger in a strange land—would seem uniquely suited to concerns of African American novelists? Yet, to my knowledge, only Samuel R. Delaney, Octavia Butler, Steve Barnes, and Charles Saunders have chosen to write within the genre conventions of science fiction. This is especially perplexing in light of the fact that African Americans, in a very real sense, are the descendants of alien abductees; they inhabit a sci-fi nightmare in which unseen but no less impossible force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements; official histories undo what has been done; and technology is too often brought to bear on black bodies.” (Dery, 1994, p.107-108)
This notion of ‘technology’ in the form of invasive industry destroying the environment, and therefore the society’s most vulnerable inhabitants is referenced in Stars and Stripes (2019). A depiction of a nation as a dystopian theme park, that has become so consumed with amusement, and consumerism that it has rendered the world unsalvageable. Still, this loose visual narrative features an evident deus ex machina that weaves all the works together—introducing a common resolve in, The Gospel Spoke of A Redeemer (2019) which features an image of a young girl as a savior figure, clad with a honeycombed halo and accompanied by an army of bees In the midst of a scorched earth represents a symbolic revitalization.
With all things considered, in this body of work, Najee Dorsey has configured an Afrofuturist visual narrative, that outlines our seemingly impending future, caused by the advent of modern technology—in the form of environmentally harmful industry. All while providing depictions of environmental issues affecting poor folks in the south, within an Afrofuturist context. Then too, visually compelling imagery has been used to convey a seemingly bleak narrative. Revealing environmentally harmful factors hidden in plain view—as these meticulously configured collage works provide much context for transformative dialogue, and inspiration for a better future.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Bullard Ph.D., Robert. “Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, And Environmental Quality, Third Edition” (Oxford: Westview Press, Inc. 2000)
Dery. Mark. “Flame Wars.” (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994)
King, Martin Luther. “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010)
