Read more
In the western imagination, a Black man is always a stranger. Outsider, foreigner, intruder, alien. One who remains associated with their origins irrespective of how far they have travelled from them. One who is not an individual in their own right but the representative of a type. What kind of performance is required for a person to survive this condition? And what happens beneath the mask? In answer, Ekow Eshun conjures the voices of five very different men. Ira Aldridge: nineteenth century actor and playwright. Matthew Henson: polar explorer. Frantz Fanon: psychiatrist and political philosopher. Malcolm X: activist leader. Justin Fashanu: million-pound footballer. Each a trailblazer in his field. Each haunted by a sense of isolation and exile. Each reaching for a better future. Ekow Eshun tells their stories with breathtaking lyricism and empathy, capturing both the hostility and the beauty they experienced in the world. And he locates them within a wider landscape of Black art, culture, history and politics which stretches from Africa to Europe to North America and the Caribbean. As he moves through this landscape, he maps its thematic contours and fault lines, uncovering traces of the monstrous and the fantastic, of exile and escape, of conflict and vulnerability, and of the totemic central figure of the stranger.
About the author
Ekow Eshun is a writer, curator and broadcaster. He is author of the memoir Black Gold of the Sun, nominated for the Orwell Prize for its exploration of race and identity, and The Strangers, longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. Hailed by the Guardian as ‘a cultural polymath’, he was the first Black editor of a major magazine in the UK and went on to become the first Black director of a leading British arts institution. He has created documentaries for BBC TV and radio and his writing appears in publications including the Guardian, The New York Times and Financial Times.
Described by Vogue as ‘the most inspired – and inspiring – curator in Britain’, Ekow Eshun has curated critically acclaimed exhibitions internationally, working with venues including the Hayward Gallery and National Portrait Gallery in London, as well as museums and galleries in Asia, Africa and the United States. He is Chairman of the Fourth Plinth, overseeing Britain’s foremost public art programme. He lives in London.
