Today we released Surviving Blackness – a powerful spoken word poem on anti-Black racism.
For this piece, we teamed up with Lee Mokobe – an award-winning Black trans slam poet and LGBTQ activist. The poem and kinetic typography video can be viewed at https://fineacts.co/surviving-blackness.
Lee Mokobe, referencing to their experience as a Black transgender immigrant, speaks of the entrenched racism in the United States: “You who fashions nooses and makes us wear it like it is our birthright. [...] You who make Black parents teach us guidelines on how to survive.” They share their unapologetic set of survival skills developed over the years, sounding the empowering call to action to stand up and live.
“I have experienced racism intimately as a black person. Even more so as a transgender person and African. This piece is my own sort of lamentation towards the problems we face as a community and as individuals. It was to look at myself in the mirror and ask what do I want this world to look like for black people and how do we get there. I am constantly surviving my skin in a world that has the power to give me my human rights, without clauses and prejudice. It is to ask the world to do better by bettering ourselves,” says Lee Mokobe.
People across the world have taken to the streets, calling for systemic change and an end to anti-Black racism and racial injustice. We wanted to bring a piece that both stems from the movement, and has the power to rally and uplift it. So we turned to the spoken word, an art form historically connected to the civil rights movement. We believe in the power of art to ignite and transform, and we are committed to producing works that matter, and to amplifying Black artists’ voices, which serve to inspire and point the way forward.
Last month, we commissioned 12 Black typographers and lettering artists from around the world to create an open pack of 24 protest posters – all free to print and share, and ready to be used in action in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The posters can be previewed and downloaded here: https://fineacts.co/blm