Language and Painting: Jibade-Khalil Huffman ’03 and Azikiwe Mohammed ’05 Spoke to Writing’s Influence on their Art on LitHub
L-R: Jibade-Khalil Huffman ’03 and Azikiwe Mohammed ’05.
It might seem natural that visual artists look to the visual for inspiration, but what about the written word? Mieke Marple, writing for LitHub, spoke with 14 contemporary artists about how reading influences their work, including Jibade-Khalil Huffman ’03 and Azikiwe Mohammed ’05. Huffman, whose work incorporates “subtitles, titles, and more abstract juxtapositions of text,” and who has published several books of poetry, says he’s currently reading Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib. In his work, “there is typically lots of veering back and forth between a clear sort of description/essay and the more indeterminate shifts of thought that poetry allows.” Mohammed, meanwhile, cites Todd McFarlane’s Spawn as an inspiration. “It is drawn out in a way that feels luxurious, for me, as a Black man, rarely able to have time exist as such,” he says. “The character Spawn is a Black man who has died, and in death found the time that I lack here while among the living.”
Post Date: 03-22-2022
Post Date: 03-22-2022