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More Flavor: Lecture Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture: Iona Rozeal Brown

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Painter Iona Rozeal Brown has dubbed her artist's process "a3," which stands for "Afro-Asiatic allegory" — a concise moniker for works that arise from the collision of two very different traditions. Brown makes paintings that resemble Japanese, Edo-era woodblock prints, except the figures are in blackface, and sport hip-hop gear and African-American hairdos. Brown's paintings aren't simply anachronistic cultural mashups, but are, in fact, based on the Japanese subculture of ganguro — literally "blackface" — a contemporary street style achieved by deep tanning, heavy brown makeup, and bleached blond hair. The uneasy juxtaposition of two visual traditions, though symptomatic of a growing global culture, remains confounding.

– H.G. Masters

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