Really Big, Black Ass

I found this article by John Murph in the Metro Express this morning (though the article is missing from the website). It's about performance artist Holly Bass, who intends to challenge the stereotypes of Hip Hop culture, from the inside. She takes a critical look at blackness, the good and the bad, re-evaluating the "black experience."



She says, "I want us to start talking about hip-hop as art form and not as a social problem. Of course, as a woman, it's pretty hard to accept all the [negative] images that are sort of thrown out. But at the same time, I really love hip-hop. I really love being on the dance floor. And, yes, I love shaking my booty."



Her work in full is called "Uppity Negroes on Parade" and she is showing a 10 min segment at the Dissident Display Studio & Gallery.



I'm intrigued. I probably won't go to see it. But anyone who has the balls (or the ass) to challenge the entrenched ideology of fatalism, defeatism, racism, misogyny, machismo, homophobia and anti-intellectualism of (most) hip-hop, is OK in my book.