Artist seeks to include Black life
For Kenya (Robinson), what began as a relaxing pastime turned into a personal mission.
The award-winning artist, who styles her last name with parentheses, is behind the (Re)Stock Image Collection Project, which turns ordinary people of color into models.
And it all started with some escapist reading.
“I love a trashy novel, what they call urban fiction,” said (Robinson), who is based in Gainesville. “It’s not supposed to give you any nutrition but it’s fun and sweet and bubbly.”
(Robinson) would read urban fiction, featuring nonwhite characters in gritty, pulpy exploits, for fun. Then, as she delved into her own artistic endeavors with the genre she came up short.
(Robinson) needed stock art — the generic photographs of people doing ordinary things, frequently used in advertisements, magazines and blogs.
When she had a specific need — say some women playing cards: “You could find it if they were white,” she said.
But that wasn’t what (Robinson) needed.
“I would be looking for Black people, and I was
looking for them doing all kinds of stuff,” she said. “I was increasingly frustrated.”
As her artist statement on the project puts it: “Apparently, only white people kickbox, or get kidnapped, or use prosthetics, or operate computers past the age of 65, or stand in front of a ‘SOLD’ sign.”
(Robinson)’s frustration sparked the Blixel: (Re) Stock Image Collection project, a communitywide component of Orlando Museum of Art’s “Voices and Conversations” exhibit. Its next public event is this Saturday, Feb. 27. From noon to 4 p.m., the Loch Haven Park museum will host a photo shoot to document people of African descent interacting with technology — texting, scrolling, typing and otherwise interacting with cellphones, tablets, computers, video games and more.
Volunteer models at the shoot, copresented by Black Orlando Tech, will receive free admission to the museum galleries. For more information or to reserve a 30-minute modeling slot, contact Robinson at Kenya. Robinson@gmail.com.
Volunteers of all Black skin tones and those older than 55 are particularly needed.
“When I do find stock imagery of Black people, there’s a very narrow color range,” said (Robinson), the winner of the 2018 Florida Prize in Contemporary Art. “And it’s hard to find someone who is a senior.”
For the museum, the project helps meet the “Voices and Conversations” goal of engaging the community, while also creating something tangible to address inequity in artistic racial representation.
“The whole purpose was offering the museum as a platform where these voices can be heard and meaningful conversations can happen,” said associate curator Coralie Claeysen-Gleyzon. “This performance is months long, and the community is the performance.”
As (Robinson) developed her idea, artists Jillian Marie Browning and LaJuné McMillian jumped on board, and the project began looking at other forms of stock imagery — illustration, video and motion-capture frameworks.
McMillian, who gave an online presentation this month as part of the museum’s community outreach, has been developing a Black Movement Library to help digital artists working with motion-capture technology — the electronic adaptation of human forms into avatars for video games and online uses.
“They lack tools to create diverse characters and movements,” McMillian said. “There’s a lack of care with what the actual movements are. It’s really problematic.”
When Black-based figures are available in the motion-capture world, they are often hard to find, oversimplified or inappropriate because of a lack of historical and cultural information in available databases, McMillian said.
The Black Movement Library aims to fix that.
“I really do want people to use it,” MacMillian said of the database in progress. “But I want to set up a system that lets them respect the data fully.”
Claeysen-Gleyzon hopes the museum’s commitment to “(Re)Stock” emphasizes the institution’s desire to welcome all of Central Florida.
“We hope people know the museum is their home,” she said, “and it’s home to everyone.”
(Robinson) sees it as a starting point — with volunteer models taking photos for the collection at home and other venues becoming photo-shoot spots.
“I’m hoping this opens a commitment to ever-expanding the library,” she said. “There obviously can’t ever be too many images.”