Chelle Barbour
“Every blank piece of paper or canvas involves a gestalt of creativity--Juxtaposing and integrating disparate images that fit evenly or symbolically together. I rely purely on my imagination to guide me towards creating beautiful hybrids of Afro-Diasporan characters grounded in dadaism, constructivism, or minimalism that personify beguiling interlocutors that disrupt worn-out societal notions of black women. The work succeeds when the visual metaphors can speak to our strength, vulnerability, resistance, and power.”
“I work through the lens of Afro-Futurism and Surrealism.”
“Surreal Plantation (2021) by Chelle Barbour
In Surreal Plantation, Chelle Barbour explores Afro-Futurism—a philosophy that engages science fiction, Black history, and technology—to take viewers on a journey through time. Inspired by the nearby photograph, Cotton Picking, 7 Miles west of Huntsville, Ala, Lanford-Slaughter Plantation, she transformed the figures in the original image into time travelers by covering their heads in astronaut helmets and adding hovering UFOs.
These elements are juxtaposed with a gathering of elegantly dressed women and children posed in the foreground. The slave cabins placed in the distance and the wagon filled with raw cotton bolls are reminders of the legacy of slavery and the Southern economy’s debt to Black labor. Standing to the left and right are two elegantly dressed Black women who serve as allegorical pillars of strength and resilience. They stand as tall as the towering native African Baobab Trees at their sides. The youth occupied with books suggest the value of reading and education, and the young boy holding a rocket connotes the innovation of Black inventors that reshaped American industry. Barbour’s collage addresses an African and African American past and speculates on the powers that contributed to ancestral survival.