Ike Okafor-Newsum, a renowned African-American painter and sculptor, sets out in his latest book, Soulstirrers: Black Art and the Neo-Ancestral Impulse, to document for posterity the history, lives, works, themes, challenges, reach, and influence of African-American artists based in Cincinnati, Ohio, who formed a group that has grown into an arts movement, the Neo-Ancestralists. Initially not a member of the group, his respect and high regard for the founding members of the group and the philosophy that guides their work convinced him that he shares a similar moral and spiritual stance with them. The sometimes transient nature of human attention and interest, coupled with intellectual desire to let other people from different climes and lands get acquainted with the works and themes of the Neo-Ancestralists, were some of the motivating factors that led to the writing of the book.

Though they share a similar vision of projecting the positive values of African-American art to the world, as seen in the primary aims of the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968); the Black Power Movement of the 1960s to 1970s; and the Black Arts Movement (1965-1975), the Neo-Ancestralists sought to carve a niche for themselves by creating an environment where their art could be viewed and assessed on its own merit. As African-American artists based in a society where black-skinned people are regarded as second-class citizens, they use their art to negate demeaning terms that question their abilities and capabilities. At the same time, their art projects a cultural history that is rich in ancestral legacies of the individual and collective history of Africa, and also projects the everyday life of an average African-American in a society fraught with socio-political tensions.

The five chapters that make up the book discuss the two-fold experiences of African-Americans: the constant need to survive in an atmosphere that is fraught with overt and covert violence, and a conscious reaching out to the past, to images and to memory, to bring into consciousness a cultural legacy that is filled with the richness of family and rituals of everyday living. In chapter 1, the author chronicles the events and experiences that led to his first meeting with, his relationship to, and his eventual membership in the Neo-Ancestral Movement. He wanted a black arts movement that would not “limit” him, echoing his brother’s view that “the artist must not be contained.” The Ancestralists provided room for him to be himself, conforming to the rules but also deviating from them, establishing himself just as he is.

Chapter 2 discusses the origin of the Neo-Ancestralist group, their initial challenges, the founding members, and the general themes of the group’s artistic expressions, among other matters. Chapter 3 pays particular attention to each of the core members of the group— Kenneth Obasi Leslie, Jimi Jones and Thomas R. Phelps—and to the books and artists that enriched their philosophies and artistic stance, and the consistency in their attempts to produce artwork that repudiates a “Western superculture.”

Chapter 4 highlights a major theme of the Neo-Ancestralists: to identify social ills or problems in order for people to be aware of them and then work towards addressing them. More importantly, these ills are situated within the context of particular historical events that pushed African-Americans down to the lowest rung of the ladder, some of which include: racial discrimination, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and Jim Crow segregation. From their involvement with these issues, the Neo-Ancestralists, through their art, devised a bottom-up approach in their quest to reposition the average African-American in an environment that has become increasingly hostile.

Chapter 5 is dedicated to the monumental installations staged by four of the Ancestralists, Tom Phelps, Kenneth Obasi Leslie, Jimi Jones, and Ike Okafor-Newsum, at the Shot Tower Gallery in Columbus, Ohio, which ran from August 25 to October 3, 2003. This art exhibition, titled, “Bloods: the Neo-Ancestral Impulse in African-American Art,” captured scenes from historical to contemporary events which were of great import to the individual and collective psyche of African-Americans. Using familiar and familial objects and activities, their installations call to mind the average African-American’s connection to home, Africa; to the earth; to family; to an honest day’s work; to bright colors, fashion, and social outings; to songs, laughter, and church; to new life, death, burials, and memories; to slavery, institutionalized violence, and injustice; to racism, maiming, rape, killings, economic impoverishment, and imprisonment; to movements, travels, and migrations; among other themes. Chief among these art installations are Tom Phelp’s “Middle Passage,” “Wash Day,” and “Church Lady”; Ken Leslie’s “Urban Cosmology”; Jimi Jones’s “The Riot Series” (“Fallen Men,” “Revolution,” and “Porkapolis”); and Ike Okafor-Newsum’s “Gorrilla on the Move: Wherever I Go, Let Your Spirit Follow Me” (this is the cover picture of the book, SoulStirrers); “Strange Fruit/Crucifix”; “Nkisi” and “Spirit Boxes.” The forty-two pages that make up this chapter are replete with colorful pictures of many of the installations.

From a general and critical reading of the book, the following observations are noted. The Neo-Ancestralists art forms couch the ordinary and the secular, the everyday things/objects, in sacred and sombre colors and undertones. They inform of the sacredness in the ordinary, and in their art, ordinary rituals like washing and ironing of clothes are elevated to the sublime. Their art can be described as protest art, not only against state machinery, actions, and policies, but also against the individual consciousness, to wake it from its slumber and uncritical spirit. Their art stares one in the face, jolts one into wakefulness. The viewer is either glued to the art, or runs away from it. Their art also seeks to repudiate the negative labels and terms that are usually ascribed to Black Art.

In the portrayal of the ordinary, the political is intended or expressed. Tom Phelp’s “Middle Passage,” Jimi Jones’s “Riot Series,” and Ike Okafor-Newsum’s “Strange Fruit/Crucifix” address historical and contemporary events where the African-American male, particularly, was seen as the other and hunted down by the institutionalized machinery of violence. The Neo-Ancestralists’s quest to remain connected to their roots in Africa made them resort to the use of memory to conjure up routine house chores like ironing, home decoration, and social practices like burying the dead or going to church on Sundays, to mention a few. Through their art, they bring to the public gaze the ancestral legacy and culture of which they are very much a part. These artists all carry within them the sacred impulse, the cultural duty, to revive the consciousness of people to the connectivity they have with their roots, and to not forget the past. Their artwork expresses a deep longing and affection for their African roots.

The Neo-Ancestralists also extend the connection to self-taught artists who are regarded as untrained and unprofessional. In an environment where Western modes of art are regarded as more original and better, the Neo-Ancestralists know that whether trained or self-taught, the work of the African-American artist is always seen in the realm of the marginal. Through their works, they contribute to the environmental cause by reawakening people’s gaze and attention to discarded objects that are creatively adapted to form objects of beauty that adorn the same society that had discarded them.

There are a few errors. For example, “Disciples of the Hood,” spelled correctly on pages 9, 44, and 53, is called “Disciples in the Hood” on page 27. Another error is also a mix up: on page 55, Jimi Jones’s portrait of a man with taped fingers was said to be part of the “Northern Soul/Southern Blues 2” exhibition, but on page 56, the reader is told the portrait appeared in “Northern Soul/Southern Blues 1.” The book, SoulStirrers: Black Art and the Neo-Ancestral Impulse, is a rich document of the philosophy, works, and guiding principles of the Neo-Ancestral Art Movement.

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[Review length: 1301 words • Review posted on October 31, 2017]