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“I just wanted to re-create that feeling of, like, eating cereal in the morning and watching cartoons,” says Juliyen Davis, curator of the Black Anime art exhibit now showing at Industry One.
“A lot of us, we grew up with The Boondocks and Naruto, you know?” Davis continues, gesturing across Industry One’s broad West End showroom, alight with 11 vintage televisions, either portable or with attached VHS players, as well as a diverse assemblage of media, all in some way calling on the uniting thread: the intersection of hyperpop Y2K anime culture and the visual language of U.S. Black youth culture.
Davis’ curatorial thesis speaks to generational tethers specific to the Y2K era as well as their reflections back to Black arts and culture of the same time. “We have this childhood in common, and now, as these artists kind of build out their universes, it’s almost like a renaissance. It’s an important moment for Black animation.”
While video plays a significant role in the activation, Black Anime is equally defined by visual works. For instance, a painting by Rixy titled Hunting Blade embodies cuteness and quiet horror in equal measure. David J. Torres II, whose striking illustrative landscape epic Reaching the Underground City, Mozmir also speaks to Davis’ suggestion that each of these artists works within their own created universe, building and expanding ever outward. On the back wall of the gallery, Julian Adon Alexander’s graphite portraits juxtapose Black faces with complementary manga portraits and imagery, pulling a particular thread of Davis’ thesis into sharp relief—we are more alike than we are different.
Sculpture and textile works by Oseanworld were clearly informed by the icon of the genre, Takashi Murakami, whose influence, one way or another, seemed to work its way into each of the Black Anime artists’ subconscious—an influence so warmly and foundationally embraced that it almost felt as if its exclusion would redefine the theme.
But back to the video renaissance presented throughout Industry One’s gallery. Animated films playing from the multiple screens around the space affirm the breakfast moment Davis described. A minimalistic, contemporary anime by Podge called Big Shot & Friends plays out in soothing, muted tones between two other 12-inch TV/VCR combos, each playing more frenetically familiar hero/villain anime by Chibu Okere and Brice Maleo.
On the opposite wall, eight more televisions—both combo units and even more retro-rare portable televisions—loop clean, hypnotic visuals by Oseanworld and Jeron Braxton while Super Smash Bros. demos on the next television.
In the nucleus of the gallery, a plush knitted rug lies beneath five or six bean bag chairs, an homage to the basement rumpus rooms and childhood bedroom floors of youth, where aficionados and their children can settle in and give their full attention to the video works on display—and, if the mood is right, maybe play some Super Smash Bros.
“We had a lot of kids, like actual children, at the opening,” Davis laughs. “It was so funny—people my age saying how they just got whooped in Smash Bros. by an actual child.”
The mission of honoring this shared cultural moment of Davis’ youth and how it has informed a generation of Black creatives lands effortlessly. The opening featured a manga giveaway; visitors lounged in bean bags and across the gallery’s modular sofas, devouring comics and losing themselves in surreal, cutting-edge cartoons. In each genre, finding their reflections, new connections, and potentially new cultural touchstones as compelling as The Boondocks and Naruto and Black Samurai.
Case in point: Jeron Braxton just announced involvement in an upcoming feature starring Kid Cudi, Teyana Taylor, and Willow Smith. Chibu Okere and Zack Fox’s animated series Yoppaman (their exhibit welcomes visitors to the show) is supported by Donald Glover’s creative studio Gilga.
“One thing everyone has to do,” Davis says as we close out our gallery visit, “is rip a Beyblade with me.”
He quickly mentors me over another central exhibition—a two-ring Beyblade tournament arena for playing with the small Japanese spinning tops—and we indeed rip Beyblades against each other, and we are two adult children, reveling in the frivolity of youth, just as Davis intended.
GO: Black Anime at Industry One, 415 SW 10th Ave., industry1.org. 9 am–5 pm Monday–Friday, through May 30. Free.
