Electric Blog

Mas is a celebration of the subordinate. The mask is a tool of the underclass. It offers possibilities for false identity making, new identity making and revelations of the self. The masquerader obstructs state and public surveillance by inviting themselves to be seen. Masquerading as a self-adornment practice allows those who were barred from the promises of freedom; upward mobility, ownership over body, sexuality and labor, the opportunity chart their own meanings of freedom.

This photographic collection of images positions Black folk’s stealing as a performance of wake work. The Black rebels in these photos challenge the notion of private property and fiercely refuse the legacy of Black bodies as chattel. Beyond the actual “looting” of property, they steal their right to mourn for the dead in their own ways; they steal back their voices in a world that aims to silence them…

…death come to my house/didn’t stay long/looked on my bed and my father was gone/I’m gonna see my friends again/hallelu.

M. NourbeSe Philips theorizes maroonage as the “coming together” of body, space and place. To maroon is to abscond from the outer space, and to forge an inner space, a real and imagined orbit cultivated for the Black body. This space becomes an oppositional geography to the predominate state order, it is, even if ephemeral, impenetrable to the outside forces of white supremacy. The maroon - through acts of subversion, mapping routes of escape and, plotting land - claimed place, and reclaimed their bodies as sites for the construction of alternative visions of freedom.