In his large-scale drawings, Dawolu Jabari Anderson co-opts the vernacular of graphic design and advertising in order to present ironic critiques of how black history in the United States is oversimplified and commodified. His drawings are made with acrylic paint on top of which he applies stained-brown, brittle (yet hardy) paper that has been “chocolate-baked” using a technique of the artist’s own invention. The paper’s ocher tint and semblance of aging reinforce the drawings’ invocation of the historicization, monumentalization, and subsequent corporatization of heroicist narratives.

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Anderson is a member of Otabenga Jones & Associates, also in the 2006 Biennial.

...read more about this artist in the Biennial Catalogue

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Frederick Douglass Self-Defense Manual Series, Infinite Step Escape Technique #1: Hand Seeks Cotton, 2005. Ink and acrylic on chocolate, butter paper, builder’s paper, and craft paper, 43½ x 33½ in. (110.5 x 85.1 cm). Collection of the artist

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