Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat’s All Colored Cast (Part III), created in 1982, is a large-scale work executed in acrylic and crayon on a square canvas measuring 152.5 by 152.5 centimeters. Currently held in a private collection, the painting immediately commands attention through its vivid yellow background, which serves as a luminous field upon which…
Black Jezus — Tupac Shakur
Black Jesus Was Tupac Shakur: An Exploratory Essay Afeni Shakur, born Alice Faye Williams in 1947 in Lumberton, North Carolina, is the Black Madonna of this story. Like the Virgin Mary, she was a woman of low social station who found herself pregnant under extraordinary and threatening circumstances. At the time of Tupac’s conception, Afeni…
The Black Madonna and Black Baby Jesus
Ermias Joseph Asghedom: The Black Baby Jesus and the Black Madonna The Jesus archetype is among the most enduring mythological and spiritual frameworks in human civilization. It traces the arc of a sacred figure born into conditions of marginalization and danger, raised by a mother of extraordinary strength and spiritual weight, who grows to become…
The Same Image: Basquiat’s Premonition and the Life of Ermias Asghedom
A Comparative Essay There are moments in art history when an image refuses to stay in its own time. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s All Colored Cast (Part III), painted in 1982 in a studio apartment on Market Street in Venice, California, is one of those images. Rendered in acrylic and crayon on a luminous yellow canvas, the…
Fear Is Gone
I’d like to welcome everybody … Welcome all the new Marathon members… to the experience of a lifetime… I need your hands up though… Let’s praise HIM. “So God created man in his own image.” (Genesis 1 : 27) This is the essential Christian message which gets so mixed up in the minds of people….
Unified Field Theory (Part Two)
It seems that we are on one accord these days — unified. There are several public figures — artists and scholars — who are promoting Black identity whose works I have encountered recently. These individuals are not presenting myths, but actually depicting historic figures as they more than likely were. For instance, I can’t picture…
Unified Field Theory
Dr. Frances Cress Welsing (March 18, 1935 – January 2, 2016) in her book entitled The Isis Papers (1992) wrote an essay regarding a concept she called Unified Field Theory. To my recollection, the theory has to do with the ubiquitous nature of racism. I believe Dr. Cress Welsing borrowed the name from a pre-existing…
The Spirit Through Many Lives
“Diviners were …. what might be phrased specialists in cool, whose own initiation had, significantly, combined prolonged staring at the sun with training in the lore of soothing herbs and cooling, sacred water. The concern with herbs (green) and the disk of the sun (orange) immediately suggests a vivid sense of contrast in nature harnessed…
What Happened in Nizwa, Oman? (Part Two)
March began as a joyous month with Ethiopians celebrating the 123rd anniversary of the Battle of Adwa. Yet the month of March 2019 turned solemn when many people lost their lives on Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, and Eritrean-American rapper Nipsey Hussle was killed. These isolated events might have all just been coincidences. But for me…
What Happened in Nizwa, Oman? (Part One)
I arrived in Muscat, Oman on January 27, 2019. The following day I visited the home office of the company I was to work for — Al Nawa. On my way into the building, I noticed a car parked outside with the license plate 10914. When ever I see 109 I imagine it is a…
Tokyu in Tokyo Soul Searchin’
Welp, here I am in Tokyo again. It was interesting how I saw the same people in different places today. I met VeronicaKaiKai of TikTok fame. She’s from Denmark. I, also, remember seeing the man wearing the KENZO PARIS t-shirt. He was entering the Nitori store when I saw him first. Then, I saw him…
Larchmont Chronicles
On Sunday, June 8, of our Lord, two thousand twenty five, I went to the Larchmont district in search of a safe place from which to video-record content for my YouTube channel. What transpired was a bunch of joyous moments that made the day superb. What stands out is the moment a TV producer sat…
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