Category Archives: Hip Hop

A Nation in Suspense

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I really enjoyed Pinder’s article on biraciality in contemporary American art because it called my attention to race relations in the U.S. through describing what Pinder refers to as the “racial crossroads of the 20th century”.  By providing examples of drastically different notions of racial hybridity, she shows how the disparity of opinions leaves the nation in suspense, and delves into what representations of racial hybridity represents in contemporary America.  What I found most interesting was the biracial individual’s shift from tragedy to trendy in the eyes of the American people.  For example, in the 19th Century Tiger Woods would have been looked down upon due to his racial background whereas now, images of people like Tiger Woods that represent racial hybridity are viewed as symbols of unity amongst the American people.  Pinder also goes into the difficulty that people of mixed race backgrounds experience when trying to place mentally themselves within the fabric of western civilization: “the west divides its ability to comprehend good/evil and black/white, the way in which it makes oppositions in everything.  Not just simple oppositions but hierarchical, superior/inferior oppositions… so that one is always better than…” (394)  This part of the passage truly grasped my attention because it verbalized a way of thinking so deeply embedded within our society that I never even noticed or bothered to question.  This divisive comprehension can be seen below in Lorraine O’Grady’s piece The Clearing.

Lorraine O'Grady The Clearing

Pinder:  Pinder brings different notions of racial hybridity in contemporary America to the forefront and discusses what images of biraciality in contemporary art represent.

Waegner:  Waegner examines the trend of yellowface/blackface impersonation through Hip Hop art.

Identity Negotiation Within the Hip Hop Community

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Pinder: Contemporary artists, such as Lorraine O’Grady, explore the issue of biraciality and its “good” and “bad” dichotomy within our society.

Waegner: Through the negotiation of ethnicity and identity, artists in “Performing Postmodernist Passing” depict the trope of yellowface/blackface in their work.

Hip-Hop Project (1), 2001
Hip-Hop Project (1), Nikki S. Lee, (2001)

I am intrigued by Nikki S. Lee’s yellowface/black face impersonation in the Hip-Hop Project (1) (2001), in which she immerses herself into the predominately African-American hip-hop community in the Bronx. Despite her negotiation of identity, and “playful postmodernist passing” (Waegner, 223), Lee is suggesting that in order to be accepted you have to become an insider which can play into the reality of social and cultural isolation if one is an outsider. I would argue that in this image Lee still appears to be of Asian identity, which questions the success of her passing. However, since hip-hop is a “cross-cultural portability” (Waegner, 225), having Lee pose as her true South Korean self would change the reception of this photo. I would then interpret this image as hip-hop crossing social and cultural barriers, as it does today, regardless of race and ethnicity. One does not have to identify with a certain type to appreciate a specific genre of music, which is not what I interpret this image to portray. What about the Latino/a community within in the Bronx that is a part of the hip-hop community? Lee’s impersonation of a woman of African descent rejects the diversity of such community, making it race-specific and stereotypical.

Nikki S. Lee and the “Hip-Hop Project”

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Within Cathy Waegner’s “Performing Postmodernist Passing,” I am struck by the ways in which Nikki S. Lee’s works use the impersonation of race as a project of “denigrating the Other.” (Waegner, 223) Lee gains access to various communities in order to document them and to give viewers an intimate look at the lives of other people. Within her “Hip-Hop Project,” Lee’s photos allow a “voyeuristic glimpse” into the world of hip hop. (Waegner, 224) In doing so, Lee uses her own body as a canvas inscribed with the iconography of the culture and in turn presents a revealing performance of race, identity and society. At once, she captures the experience and lives it as an active participant. Throughout the description of the details of this project, I return to the idea of authenticity. The willingness of the subjects, as well as the staged nature of the photographs seem to disrupt the documentary nature of the works and raise the question of how we define authenticity. While Waegner refers to this as the embodiment of “‘willed authenticity,’” I wonder how the subjects’ cognizance of the project determines what is revealed. (Waegner, 224) As Lee transforms her own body and lifestyle to experience and document various factions of society, she calls into question the static categories of identity. Authenticity—by no means a static term or concept—has been the topic of many of our discussions as we consider the medium of photography as a political and subjective tool, and Lee’s work seems to complicate the idea of authenticity by making race, identification and agency fluid terms as well.

Waegner: Citing various examples (like Nikki S. Lee or R. Kelly’s Thoia Thoing), Waegner highlights the “growing trend” toward yellowface/blackface impersonation. (Waegner, 223)

Pinder: By discussing the works of Lorraine O’Grady and the public perception of multiethnic icons like Tiger Woods, Pinder discusses biraciality in the modern world and the polyptych nature of our culture.