On Friday a unique and captivating experience that explores the African American man’s perspective first hand made its way to The Missouri History Museum.
The exhibit Question Bridge: Black Males, a transmedia art project that seeks to represent and redefine Black male identity in America, debuted and will run until June. Question Bridge: Black Males uses video mediated question and answer exchange, diverse members of this “demographic” bridge economic, political, geographic, and generational divisions.
Question Bridge: Black Males was created by Chris Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas, Bayeté Ross Smith, and Kamal Sinclair. The Executive Producers are Delroy Lindo, Deborah Willis and Jesse Williams.
It is a project that critically explores challenging issues within the Black male community by instigating a transmedia conversation among black men across the geographic, economic, generational, educational and social strata of American society. Question Bridge provides a safe setting for necessary, honest expression and healing dialogue on themes that divide, unite and puzzle black males in the United States.
The exhibit originated in 1996, when artist Chris Johnson was looking for a way to use media art to generate a meaningful conversation around class and generational divisions within San Diego’s African American community. Mediated through the lens of a video camera, ten members of the black community were given a format to openly express their deeply felt beliefs and values through candid question and answer exchanges. None of the questions or answers were prompted. A decade later, Hank Willis Thomas approached Johnson about collaborating to establish a similar project focused on Black men. Over the past four years, Johnson, along with Hank Willis Thomas, Bayeté Ross Smith and Kamal Sinclair, have traveled the nation collecting questions and answers from over 150 Black men in eleven cities including: New York, Chicago, Oakland, San Francisco, Birmingham, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Philadelphia. The resulting video project contains of over 1,500 exchanges. By focusing on exchanges within this extended community, surprising insights and new possibilities for witnessing our common humanity emerge
Question Bridge: Black Male runs at the Missouri History Museum through June 16th. For more information, visit www.mohistory.org.
