WeeklySA_AdminMULTIGENERATIONAL: The Deans helping others to own their cultures, and tell their stories
By Jacob Mawela
Authors Deans put indigenous, Ndebele beadwork on world stage A collage of artistic work – 100 pieces of work all told which takes the name, GIANTS: Art from The Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys – is imposingly groundbreaking, and unique in many ways.
Painstakingly and delicately, the Deans went through a thousand artwork acquired over 20 years spanning 38 multigenerational Black American, African, and African diasporic artists.
These were hand-picked by the Brooklyn Museum from within the Dean Collection, the subject which forms the centrality of what the Deans want to convey to the artistic world.
The duo musical maestros introduce their vast art collection with the profound words of Kasseem Daoud Dean, aka Swizz Beatz: “I bleed this for real, and that’s the reason I started the Dean Collection to bring awareness”
His wife, Alicia Keys, adds: “As artists ourselves, we have a deep concern for fellow living artists and ensuring they receive fair recognition for their work.
“Our aim is to create a vibrant community where everyone receives the recognition they rightly deserve. “We don’t own enough of our culture. So, we want to lead the pack in owning our own culture and owning our own narrative instead of waiting for someone who’s not part of the culture to tell our story for us.”
The Deans are internationalists, with a held belief that the ownership of one’s culture must extend to the empowerment of others.
In this regard, the couple is part of a growing community of multigenerational black art collectors traversing the art black artworld, and wanting to make a statement that telling a black person story is far better that it being distorted by racists.
Part of the legendary black story tellers include Spike Lee, Serena Williams, Beyoncé, among others, who are supporting black artists, and have generated their own catalogues and exhibitions to express their philanthropy for current and future generations of artists.
Additionally, the Dean Collection also focuses on photographers, painters, printmakers, sculptors who use their imagery to articulate cultural traditions, reflecting the beauty and uniqueness of different societies around the world.
They are also critical of sociopolitical structures bent on oppressing others, especially black people and the LGBTQ+ communities.
The Deans Collection is thematically segmented, devoting a section of the work on what is titled, On the Shoulders of Giants. This features the artistic work our own Esther Mahlangu, the country’s self-taught artist, whose Ndebele paintings and depiction of Ndebele culture is second to none, and has been honoured by the University of South Africa (Unisa) with an honorary doctoral degree conferred on her in recognition of her work.
Also featuring in the collage, are monochromatic photographs of Harlem Renaissance poet, Langston Hughes.
In this artistic depiction, Hughes features civil rights activist, Malcolm X and the greatest heavyweight boxing champion of all times, Muhammad Ali.
Ali was also recognised as foremost civil rights activist, as did the Black Panthers.
The Black Panthers played a key part as the Black Power movement advocating for black nationalism, socialism, and a self-defence against police brutality.
Hughes would go on to develop a portfolio spanning 70 years documenting black cultural icons during the civil rights, promoting the ideal of the sanctity of black life deserving respect from the racist America.
In their depiction, the Deans repeatedly focused on prevalent forms of prejudice, with a particular focus on the legacies of racist structures that continued to impact negatively contemporary black communities.
Kehinde Wiley, a Los Angeles-born artist known for his majestic paintings of black subjects, was commissioned to paint the official portrait of Barack Obama, former US president, in 2017. The painting now forms part of the National Portrait Gallery collection in Washington, DC.
