Exploring Race, Representation and Redefining Black Identity with Hakim Raquib

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Boston-based photographer Hakim Raquib aims to negotiate current perspective on race and blackness. Hakim Raquib: Determined Blackness featured contemporary digital mixed-media works that explore historically-determined images of masculinity and social status. Presented as part of BHCC’s Black History Month Celebration, the exhibition ran from February 6 – 28, 2017, at the Mary L. Fifield Art Gallery.

Raquib draws from African American history to bring present-day social justice movements to the forefront. “Throughout the history of Black Lives in America, many Great Black voices of persuasion surfaced,” he in his Artist Statement, pointing to the critical impact of Fredrick Douglas, Marcus Gravey, W.E.B. Dubois and Martin Luther King. “These Great Black men of persuasion, through ideologically different, all offered courage, hope, self-determination and self-preservation.”
 
Dedicating the exhibition to these Great Black Heroes, and the descendants from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade who built America’s Infrastructure, Raquib invited viewers at an Artist’s Reception on February 23 to consider the contributions and achievements of African Americans for all American lives.
 
“As you walk through the exhibition, he said, “Reflect on where we are today. The Ancestors are listening.”

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