By Beauty Dhlamini
As a movement that dates back to the early 1990s, Afrofuturism has gained renewed momentum over the last 30 years. It has permeated various forms of popular culture including film, television, music, and also helped inspire a renewed interest in Black speculative fiction.
The term can be traced back to Mark Dery’s 1994 essay “Black to the Future”, although he was one of many scholars, writers, artists and authors considering its themes at the time. In contemporary culture, Afrofuturism is a liberatory cultural phenomenon; both a philosophy and history exploring the intersection of African diasporic culture with science fiction and technology.
Given the growing dystopian state of the world, I have started to engage more fully with Afrofuturism to restore a sense of hope, and to support my own reimagining of new and better realities. Afrofuturism has allowed me to explore themes that interlink Black womanhood, home and questions of our geopolitical past, present and possible futures. More recently, it also has spurred me to explore this through art which is why I jumped at the opportunity to see Sonya Dyer’s Three Parent Child exhibition at Somerset House.
By Beauty Dhlamini