afro asiatic allegories
Ms. Brown has mixed feelings about the ganguro phenomenon. "Being African-American, I'm flattered that our music and style is so influential," she said. "But I have to say that I find the ganguro obsession with blackness pretty weird, and a little offensive. My paintings come out of trying to make sense of this appropriation."
Ms. Brown's paintings do a little cultural sampling of their own. She takes 17th- and 18th-century Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints of geishas, bathhouse girls, samurai and Kabuki theater actors and gives them a radical makeover. The results are zany hybrids, from kimono-clad M.C.'s and gun-wielding gangsta rappers to sassy courtesans with darkened faces, dreadlocks and long painted nails. She calls them "Afro Asiatic allegories."
The New York Times on Iona Rozeal Brown, who revises Japanese woodblock prints to include hip-hop iconography.