Al-An deSouza

University of California, Berkeley, Art Practice, Professor

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Papers by Al-An deSouza

How Art Can Be Thought: A Handbook for Change

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Detours Through the Black Country: On Al-An deSouza's Expeditionary Under-Writings

Art History Journal, 2022

During the summer of the 2016 Brexit vote, the artist Al-An deSouza (fka. Allan deSouza), in the ... more During the summer of the 2016 Brexit vote, the artist Al-An deSouza (fka. Allan deSouza), in the persona of Hafeed Sidi Mubarak Mumbai, was in London conducting a performative expedition, Through the Black Country (TBC). The expedition culminated in a travelling exhibition consistent with deSouza's larger practice of ‘restaging the material culture of the colonial period in order to identify its ongoing aftermath’. TBC rescripts Henry Stanley's published expedition diaries, Through the Dark Continent (1878), to describe instead a ‘reverse’ journey from Zanzibar to England. This essay contextualizes TBC and related projects through deSouza's history of multiple migrations, involvement in the Black Arts movement in 1980s Britain, and their claim to a multiple self as simultaneous self-explication and resistant opacity. Central to deSouza's project are questions of what it means to be not-British, a consideration of ‘British art’ as counter-imperial, and their implications for post-Brexit nationalism and empire-nostalgia.

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Is This Not A..? aka This is Not a Baldessari

X-TRA, 2007

A text-work in the form of an art review of Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Image... more

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My Mother ) My Sight

Allan deSouza: A Decade of Photoworks, 1998-2008, 2008

It happened twelve years ago on a deserted Brooklyn street, the wrong place at the wrong time, ex... more It happened twelve years ago on a deserted Brooklyn street, the wrong place at the wrong time, except that I lived around the corner. Two men jumped out of a car and one ordered me at gunpoint to get down on my knees.I can still feel my face pressed against rain-dampened concrete as a semi-automatic is pressed to the back of my head and my pockets emptied; waiting for the shot, wondering what the bullet will feel like, how long the pain will last. With the gun at my head, knowing I'm going to die because that's what they're yelling at me,you're gonna die muthafucker, I'm gonna blow your fuckin brains out muthafucker, a part of me still holds onto the comforting belief-at this point, what else do I have?-that if I play nice, do what they say,good muthafucker, nice muthafucker, they won't pull the trigger because there's no reason to. Reason. It's a faith I've never invested in before, and though it might be really short-lived now, as might I, reason and obedience seem not such a bad trade-off for staying alive. Even as it was happening I remember thinking: if this were the movies and I were the hero, I would twist round, slap his gun-hand away, drop-kick him in the groin, punch him in the face, and pick up the gun where he had dropped it. If it were the movies and he the anti-hero and I the bad guy, he would shoot me whether I complied or resisted. This wasn't the movies and there was no script to follow, and that was perhaps the worst-not knowing what would happen next. When they made me kneel on the ground with my ankles crossed and my hands on my head, I knew that they had been watching too many movies and wondered which script they would follow. An image of the TV show, Cops, came into my head and its jingle-bad bqys bad b qy s what you gonna do ?-rang in my ears. It was so irritating that, instead of a scan through my own life, my last thought might have been of a TV show. I had watched it a couple of times as part of my introduction to America: it always seemed to be white cops chasing down black or brown suspects, or called to intervene in domestic assault cases. A black woman, weeping and her face bruised, sheltering a couple of screaming kids, reluctantly hands over a knife to the police as a black man is handcuffed and led away. A posse of Latino kids is-in the show's parlance-assuming the position, flat out on the ground, legs spread, hands behind their heads, and there's one kneeling, ankles crossed, fingers clasped behind his head, answering questions as three cops stand around him, batons drawn. And suddenly the whole thing, the picture of myself kneeling on a deserted sidewalk with a gun pressed to my head, seemed so ludicrous that I wasn't scared any more, because it was like being on TV The fear descended later, as did the mental run-through of the different possible outcomes. And both-fear and rerun have stayed with me. Soon after, I moved, taking literal heed of that directive, "Go west, young man." Born in Kenya, at age seven I had migrated with my family to London, then as an adult moved by myself to New York, and now again to Los Angeles, chasing the sunset until if I were to go any further west, it would become east. From England, my parents had taken one step back east, one step closer to their prior colonial histories, and had settled in Portugal. After two years in L.A., when I was aged thirty-eight, my eyes began misbehaving. A few times while reading, a paragraph of words on the edge of my peripheral vision would suddenly lift up and scuttle off the page. By the time I blinked and looked directly at the vacated space, the words had raced back and plopped down again, watching me with defiant innocence. Other times I had seen spiders in the corners of

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Thinking How Art Can Be Thought

Art Journal, 2021

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Lies of the Land

Moving Images

He wears the long white gown and kofi of the coastal people. Over one shoulder is slung a musket,... more He wears the long white gown and kofi of the coastal people. Over one shoulder is slung a musket, over the other is a strap from which hangs a sword. His arms are stiff, one hand grasping the musket handle, the other within close reach of the sword. A wide belt pulled tight into his waist makes his chest appear thrust out like a soldier at attention. His face is turned to one side, away from the camera, with his eyes seemingly focused at a point out of the camera's frame. Closer inspection reveals his eyes to be angled back; not looking at, but watching the camera as if from behind the shelter of gauze. It's an apprehensive gaze, knowing he is being recorded; turning his face away to avoid the camera's scrutiny, but glancing back just to keep an eye on the watcher. Born near the shores of Lake Nyasa, he was kidnapped as a child and transported to Zanzibar, where he was sold to an Arab merchant and taken to India. Freed at his master's death, his name being unknown-or at least untranslatable-he was renamed after the city where his master had lived. With his new moniker, Bombay, he returned to the continent of his original naming. And there, already reinvented, he might have been lost had he not also been rediscovered. In 1856, two British Army officers, Richard Burton and John Speke, met in Bombay (the city) to plan an African expedition. Sailing from Bombay (the city) to Africa, they recruited a Swahili guide and his slave, four more African slaves, four Baluchi soldiers, an Arab and last, a Yau from Nyasa: Bombay (the man). Knowing a little Hindustani from his days in Bombay (the city), Bombay (the man) was able to speak with Speke who spoke no other language to converse with the natives. An Englishman and an African in East Africa who communicated only through Hindustani. A previously unimagined communing. According to Richard Burton, Bombay had "A high narrow cranium, denoting by arched and rounded crown, fuyant brow and broad base with full development of the moral region, deficiency of the ref lectives, fine perceptives, and abundant animality."

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White Skin, Black Mask

Phillips Collection, 2009

on Man Ray's 1926 photograph, Noire et Blanche

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How Art Can Be Thought, Introduction: A Foot in the Door

How Art Can Be Thought: A Handbook for Change, 2018

The book begins with a biographical narrative of the author’s racialized experiences as an art st... more The book begins with a biographical narrative of the author’s racialized experiences as an art student and faculty at different schools. It considers modes of inclusion and exclusion, and possibilities of decolonizing art education and art practices. These are in turn considered in relation to artistic aspirations and idealism, setting the stage for multiple perspectives, languages, and practices that can meet the challenges and conflicts of the contemporary.

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2013 Undisciplined Knowledge.pdf

This essay explores the possibility of art-writing occupying a space that is "undisciplined," whe... more This essay explores the possibility of art-writing occupying a space that is "undisciplined," where it resists categorization and translation into the domain of art history. We propose that such a "space" is enabled not only through dialogue but also by recognizing the multi-sited character of art-making, and the consequences that its movement, politics, and social relations can have on writing about, and framing, contemporary art. Constructed through a series of exchanges between the two of us, the paper builds on the contingencies and temporal qualities of its own making; we tack back and forth, betraying and probing our own disciplinary biases in an effort to meet in the middle. The paper is defined by its process, which, with its mix of anecdotes, external references, and tentative offerings, is not an example of the "undisciplined" per se, but rather an exploration of its possibilities.

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The spoken word: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictée

Third Text, 1993

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The flight of/from the primitive

Third Text, 1997

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ArtSchooling

Shifter Magazine, No.20, NY, 2013

This conversation between Jeannene Przyblyski and Allan deSouza is a response to notes by deSouza... more

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Undisciplined Knowledge (On Possibilities of Writing About Art)

African Art, Interviews, Narratives: Bodies of Knowledge at Work, ed. Joanna Grabski and Carol Magee (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012

This essay explores the possibility of art-writing occupying a space that is “undisciplined,” whe... more This essay explores the possibility of art-writing occupying a space that is “undisciplined,” where it resists categorization and translation into the domain of art history. We propose that such a "space" is enabled not only through dialogue but also by recognizing the multi-sited character of art-making, and the consequences that its
movement, politics, and social relations can have on writing about, and framing, contemporary art.

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Where You Looking At?

Earth Matters, National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, 2013

"... it is this notion of a removed self that I want to consider here in relation to “earth matte... more

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Al-An deSouza

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