Afrosurrealism Is Dead
A Prologue to my article in Brooklyn Rail
This is Abigail Susik, a member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism (ISSS) along with Jonathan Eburne, Joanna Pawlik, Rochelle Spencer, and Terri Francis. For years, they have been on a campaign to erase my manifesto from the founding of Afrosurrealism and have gone as far to manipulate major institutions, including The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and Art In America Magazine to say that I wrote the Afrosurreal Manifesto in 2013, not 2009, in order to say that I didn't found the movement but am simply "a part" of it and that Terri Francis was my predecessor with a film festival she did in 2010. This mystified me for years, but if you notice, Susik is claiming Afrosurrealism with no citation here, and it was harbinger that I've been keeping my eye on for nearly a decade.
They couldn't actually change history, so what was the endgame?
Well, it was my own personal Project2025:
In 2025, Susik is releasing a book with Grégory Pierrot called "Afrosurrealism: Cymbals of Deeper Experience" in a special issue of African American Review. Willful contributors to this ultimate erasure are Rochelle Spencer and Terri Francis, while I tend to believe that Will Alexander, Robin DG Kelley and Aldon Nielsen are assuming that I will be included in the volume as we have worked together in the past.
When I wrote, "The number of times my name and my manifesto aren’t mentioned far outweigh the times when they are, and the original intent and references of the document have been absolutely obscured, mostly so others can claim what they truly have no claim over and turn it into white-led, Black-only capitalist enterprises, and not the Black-led multi-racial coalitions that the manifesto seeks to inspire," I was referring to projects like the one that Susik is spearheading. I see them all over the place and there is a concerted effort to block and ban anyone who acknowledges the true origins of The Afrosurreal Arts Movement.
The things is, those who have truly studied it have reached out to me from all over the world, and I want to support their efforts to overcome this campaign.
So what to do?
When Brooklyn Rail contacted me, I understood the impact and reach of the publication, and after some serious reflection, it came to me that if I brought Afrosurrealism to life, I was the only person to be able to announce its demise in order to divorce my vision from this white-led hostile takeover. So I killed Afrosurrealism in front of the very people who need it alive in order to feed off of it.
AFROSURREALISM IS DEAD! LONG LIVE AFROSURREALISM!