ABSTRACT
This study examines the life histories and creative processes of Black artists to understand what motivates their productions of oppositional art and space. While citizen media in the context of protest and activism that contests racial injustice is well documented in recent scholarship, this study focuses on individual contributions to resistance that take place outside specific social movements. Based on a two-year ethnographic study with nine Black artists, this study reveals how the participants’ deeply personal processes resulted in distinctive articulations of resistance. Their oppositional films, paintings, and music critically examined social issues in the zeitgeist such as police brutality, and also explored lesser-known discourses such as race in the context of disability. The participants created safe performative spaces where oppositional discourses could be experienced and shared. Stuart Hall’s contributions to the study of media production, articulation, cultural identity, and race offer the appropriate theoretical scaffolding to interpret the ethnographic findings. By locating the ethnographic accounts within a bridging of Hall’s contributions, this study meaningfully presents how distinct life experiences manifest in articulations of oppositionality.
