Palice Abrutas Darram

In LDB's "Sketch of the Author," he writes of his mother Susan's father whose name was Palice Abrutas Darram. He was sold into slavery with his son Mounch and his daughter Yambo. I will never know thier faces save in my imagination. I chose this mask as a visual representation of my ancestors who, according to DNA analysis and the MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestor) were from the west African country of Cameroon. This mask from Gabon is fitting and resonates W.E.B. Dubois' concept of African diaspora thought also known as double consciousness. Africans conditioned themselves to think and act one way within dominant European society (the slavocracy). Among ourselves, we demask relaxing our emotionally gaurded neo-nature, allowing our true self to emerge. Over the past five centuries (16th-21st) this type of psychological shifting caused the ambiguity observed in African populations throughout the diaspora today--in some cases they neither feel allegience to Africa, America, themselves or each other.