Visible/Invisible: The Osanyin Commemorative Portrait and Camo Coat Project

“Visible/Invisible: The Osanyin Commemorative Portrait and Camo Coat Project” takes its cue from the Yoruba orisa Osanyin, god of healing and leaves who often appears in half tree-half human form, to understand uses of camouflage in everyday life in the urban landscape, from an Afro-Futurist perspective in the (post-)apocalypse. This paper presents the Osanyin Project, considered in the context of art and design, and the role of protection as physical and conceptual methodology. Referencing the black-and-white stripe of military dazzle camouflage and its visual connections to Tiv-Nigerian traditional striped loom-woven textile as utilized in the companion work Wan Chuku and the Mystical Yam Farm*, the project consists of a series of portraits of NEH Fellows, colleagues in the Institute of Black Aesthetics and Sacred Systems, taken at individually-selected locations on Emory University, Atlanta campus, in a commemoration of the historic institute, documenting fleeting moments, agency in representation through collaborative process, and site as archive. A timely response to the current climate, the Camo Coat component is a garment-based response and solution which looks to AFRICOBRA co-founder Jae Jarrell’s Revolutionary Suit, considering what it means to survive and thrive in the Thunderdome.

*DePaul Art Museum, 2019; Arts Club of Chicago, 2018; Washington Project for the Arts/Collection of Peggy Cooper Cafritz, 2017; Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, 2015