#babusi nyoni

[artnoirco]

ARTNOIR + Black Lives Matter: Black Futures Month || ANSWER TIME on February 14th, 10am (PST) || 1pm (EST)

Submit Your Questions Here

ARTNOIR is excited to be collaborating with Black Lives Matter on their Black Futures Month project during Black History Month. This project is designed to inspire people during this challenging social & political climate through art and the written word to dream about tomorrow today. 

Each day in February, Black Lives Matter will release an original piece of art and an accompanying written piece to reclaim Black History Month and demonstrate the importance of using art as both an inspiration and an organizing tool. Artists from around the world have been commissioned to use their genius to promulgate the conversation about systemic racism and violence against Black people.

Today we are thrilled to co-host an interactive Q&A with visual artist Delano Dunn, digital all-rounder Babusi Nyoni and organizer/writer Miski Noor for a candid and spirited conversation via Tumblr’s Answer Time series. 

Our conversation explores how visual art and writing can serve as a platform to discuss pressing issues that impact Black communities throughout the diaspora from education to immigration.

Send us your questions and join the conversation live on  February 14th, 10am (PST) || 1pm (EST) on our Tumblr site.

[artnoirco]

how many days since the last white nonsense

MN-- 

[artnoirco]

How should I best use my white privilege to bring attention to Black Lives Matter and convince people of the merits of said movement?

MN-- Talk to your friends, family, cousins, co-workers, every white person you know about antiBlackness and white supremacy.

AntiBlackness lives in every corner of the world, and inside all of us. Yes, even Black people, and it usually manifests as internalized oppression or racism. So we all have to work to undo that in ourselves and in the world.

I can talk facts and numbers and write stories all day, but some white folks will never hear it from me. That’s where the work of white allies comes in. We need you to do that work, because it’s emotional laborious and draining, and it’ll most likely be better received coming from a white person because, honestly, that’s how white supremacy works.

[artnoirco]

How do you feel media/art influences cultural movement in regards to race?

MN-- Media/art play an incredibly important role in movement work. In fact, there is no movement work without art, in my opinion.

While our work focuses on grassroots local organizing, and it is that organizing work that makes space for everything else, the contributions of artists is crucial. For example, organizers doing the work on the ground made space for Beyonce and other artists to be more radical, more pro-Black with their work. But Beyonce is Beyonce, and her contributions, her celebrating her Black life and that of her children’s and all Black women/femmes, is invaluable. We need those sorts of cultural interventions to reach even more folks.

[artnoirco]

What advice would you give a person who is trying to reinvent themselves?

BN: Don't be afraid to become the person you will turn into ❤️

[artnoirco]

How do I start selling my pieces online? Any advice or tips?

BN: 1) Build an inventory2) Have a business model that works for you.3) Know the risks4) Use social media to build on your brand personality5) Copyright your work!6) Find a platform that’s best for your budget7) Create. Create. Create.

[artnoirco]

what is your advice to people who have to argue against other who say all lives matter.teach us to educate the ignorant. (plz tq)

MN-- My advice is to not argue the point, as people who retort “all lives matter” are only attempting to distract from the real conversation and engage you in an argument. It is fact that Black people receive less protection from the State and are targeted and murdered by the State. That is the conversation that “all lives matter” people are trying to avoid. When all Black lives matter, then all lives will matter. Period.

[artnoirco]

Dont all lifes matter..

DD - Yes they do, but from the founding of this country Black Lives, women’s and Native Americans as well as countless other groups have played secound fiddle to “white” lives. We are just trying to get people to understand that it’s time for that to change.