There is a permanent cultural anxiety in the art world. It is an anxiety about definitions: how does art – its producers, consumers, and critics – define itself within and outside the bounds of identity categories? Layered into this anxiety are histories of colonialism, white supremacy, and global capitalism that have in related ways grouped individuals into categories that fail to account for the complexities of people in their historic moment. Conversations defining black art, for instance, have morphed as discourses and practices have been altered, ever so slightly, to account for these complexities. As a result, we have reached a point where we are looking outside of ourselves in order to solve the riddle of assessment and marketability surrounding what some wrongly suggest is a moment of discovery; or worse, an entirely new phenomenon....

– This text appears in Spike #62 . You can buy it in our online shop –