Reimagining Portraits from the Global Archive: Omar Victor Diop’s Project Diaspora and reflections of the Pan-African experience

Omar Victor Diop’s photo series Project Diaspora is a reimagination of the classical representation of historical Black figures throughout history, with a modern twist. His addition of football equipment to his portraits, such as goalie gloves, cleats or a whistle bring these portrait-slash-artefacts into current conversations about African agency. By reinterpreting the portraits of diasporic Africans from the 15th to 18th century, Diop retells their stories and reflects the pan-African attribute of world history.

Diop impersonates familiar (or perhaps not so familiar) portraits of African historical figures of Europe or the West, such as Frederick Douglas and Don Miguel Castro. However, Diop himself was born and is based in Senegal, so therefore not technically part of the traditional diaspora. [1] The conception of his series can be traced to the ‘temporary displacement’ he experienced while undergoing a residency in Spain. He came across a classical painting of an African assistant of a Spanish lord, which lead to Diop’s embankment of researching and learning about other voices of the diaspora that were disappearing with the ageing of time. [2] As a result, through Project Diaspora, he opens a dialogue regarding the entanglement of history, colonisation and the African individual.

There are three elements of this series that encapsulate the reimagining of these historical individuals as pan-African icons. Firstly, Diop’s engagement with historical accuracy begs the question of to what extent he strived to recreate the portraits. His own definition of his work as “metaphorical portraits” invokes a curious dynamic between representing historical accuracy and interpreting historical memory. He thus creates what Homi Bhabha would label a third, ‘hybrid’ space that exists between two spheres of existence. Secondly, Diop channels the legacies of these historical figures with his own corporeality through the medium of self-portraiture. Franz Fanon’s analysis of the assimilation of Black identity with White culture from his book Black Skin White Masks offers interesting critiques of how Diop navigates authenticity amongst the risks of the ‘Western gaze’ imposed on these figures. Thirdly, the anachronistic addition of football motifs brings the historical photographs into modern global politics. As a token of several African cultures, the football element reveals the reincarnation of underlying exploitations of African expression and culture. These more significant meanings behind the equipment are best elucidated through Roland Barthes discussions in his essay ‘Rhetoric of the Image’, where he argues that signs carry multiple layers of meaning.

Ultimately, Diop reaffirms that the chronicles of the African diaspora are anything but a new revelation. His engagement with historical accuracy, self-portraiture and football motifs revives breath into stories of the past. As a result, his series allows viewers to revisit the origins of the diaspora identity to provide agency for the contemporary, African identity.

Diop engages with the historical accuracy of these figures in several ways. Firstly, it is important to note that several details of the lives of these individuals, as well as information on who captured their portrait, are actually unknown. Diop, therefore, utilises the descriptions of the portraits to offer a short bio on the information that still exists of that person. Even so, the loss of historical contextual information places more significant emphasis on the image itself to offer an enlightened reflection of the figure. While it is important to Diop’s emphases and goals of the series, the historical accuracy of the photographs is secondary to the style and design of the photographs, which beg the audience to reimagine the figures in the present day. Whether that be elements of the clothing, the poses or the colour scheme or backdrop, the photos are just different enough to be authentic to Diop, yet when placed side by side to their original inspiration, there are clear signs of imitation.

Diop primarily engages with the sense of historical accuracy of the portraits through his articulation of their poses and clothing. In his portrait titled Dom Nicolau (circa. 1830-1860), Diop dresses and poses as Nicolau, who was once the prince of Kongo, one of the oldest kingdoms of Africa. [3] [Figure 1] He was known as one of the first African leaders to oppose and actively protest the colonial rule of African peoples. [4] The portrait of Nicolau, in some ways, symbolises the genesis of hybridity because his original portrait captures the discorded amalgamation of Western and African cultures. The reinterpretation of historical accuracy in Project Diaspora, therefore, considers the risks of defining diaspora as existing within a dual state.

Since Diop deals with spaces that no longer exist he manifests an alternative dimension, a hybrid space that exists not entirely in the past and not fully in the present. Hybridity is first and foremost a creation of something ‘new’. Homi Bhabha located hybridity as a ‘third space’, so hybridity can also be interpreted as an unnatural or necessary offspring from the collision of two dominant space. Rinella Cere’s deconstruction of Bhabha’s notion in ‘Postcolonial and Media Studies: A Cognitive Map’ concludes that while ideas of hybridity transcend across differences, they “constantly come up against [national and ethnic binaries] in its effects on the real world, for example in the process of ‘othering’...”. [5]

Similarly, hybridity, Bhabha warns, can hold “strategies of subversion” that risk a reinstating of the superior colonial influence. [6] Diop avoids this problematic situating by presenting his work as a stand-alone artwork. He does not include the original portraits of the figures he portrays beside his artwork. As seen in his exhibition of the series at the SCAD Museum of Fashion and Film in Atlanta in 2017, for example, the portraits stood alone as autonomous portraits. [Figure 2] As Miss Rosen noted from her viewing of the exhibition, “Hung on royal blue walls, Project Diaspora comes alive, a tribute to not just the past, but to the present and future of mankind.” [7] By not evoking a direct comparison between his portraits and the original, he creates this new space for which the stories of the individuals can continue to exist, but in modern times.

This rejuvenation of their stories shows the entanglement of these figures across religion, background and culture, unifying them under the identity as Africans. Through this hybrid, ‘third’ space, therefore, Diop creates perhaps a kind of ‘imagined community’, structured not by borders, language or customs, but by their Africanity.

As mentioned in the introduction, for Diop, his self-portraits were about giving homage to these figures. In addition to the fact that this is Diop’s first time using himself as a subject, the medium of self-portrait makes the series inherently personal.[8] Diop emphasises the connection between his generation and African generations of the past by taking on the role of a storyteller of their intertwined histories. However, in an interview with Art Base Africa, he revealed he saw himself not as a subject of the photographs but as a prop. [9] Using himself as a recurring motif make his portraits feel more familiar and creates an underlying thread that connects all the works together. Diop, therefore, embodies their historical narratives and connects them through the common denominator of his recognisable face.

What these self-portraits have in common is that they reimagining European representations of African figures. In his portrait Omar Ibn Saïd (1770-1864), Diop sits with his elbow leaning on a bright yellow football. He stares straight into the camera with neutral facial expressions as his right arm rests on his leg. [10] [Figure 3] In the photograph description, Diop writes that Saïd was enslaved at 25 and brought from Senegal to the United States. While he remained enslaved for the rest of his life, he is considered an important figure for his works on history, Islamic studies, and slave narratives. The artist of the original portrait is unknown, but it has been reported that the portrait was taken around 1850 and therefore when Saïd was already in the US. [11] The combination of the Western ‘space’ and Diop’s obvious posing in this picture potentially leads to some inadvertencies regarding yielding to the White gaze. Diop arguably approaches these figures from the Western or ‘White’ gaze that captured these portraits. Therefore by reconstructing portraits, such as seen here in Omar Ibn Saïd, is he providing an accurate reflection of what Africanity stands for and has stood for?

This recreation of a Western gaze poses an interesting conjugation between what Frantz Fanon would distinguish as expressions of resistance and positions of submission. In his book Black Skin, White Mask, Fanon explores the unequal dynamic between white and Black corporealities. These portraits, he might argue, enhance the sense of inferiority felt by the Black figures at the time. If one were to approach the series strictly from the formalist qualities, the original Western depictions of Black bodies can be seen to emphasise the enhanced status symbols of the Black bodies in white spaces. Diop therefore might be highlighting what Fanon would label as the action of “... slipping on a white mask” in order for the ‘black man’ to “see himself as part of humanity” and therefore equal to the white race. [12] The ‘white masks’ in this series could be identified in the use of Western clothing, but it can also be the assimilation to the metropole’s language and culture. This assimilation with the metropole results in an alienation of the African individual. [13] Fanon writes, “The educated Negro, slave of the spontaneous and cosmic Negro myth, feels at a given stage that his race no longer understands him. / Or that he no longer understands it.” [14] Despite the elevated social status of the individuals depicted in the series, and one’s argument that they are ‘detatched from their race’, by posing in the photographs himself, Diop regenerates that inherent root of their Africanity. He emphasises the proof of their experiences by showing through his own depicted self, that this resistance towards assimilation is still being resisted against to this day. By taking these self-portraits, Diop redefines the portraits as African in their entirety, almost as if bringing, but more importantly, returning the photographs back to the continent of Africa.

The series additionally simulates Fanon’s attempt to situate the discussion of race on a temporal field. [15] While yes, one can argue that Diop reinstates a position of inferiority, Diop shifts from a place of defence to offence in his brazen inclusion of these football elements. The purpose of the series is to reroute these diaspora individuals back to the continent of Africa on a similar temporal means of uniting. Diop therefore builds that bridge by including the cultural symbols of football in these historical photographs. 

Diop’s use of certain football paraphernalia anchors the meeting of history and contemporary pop culture. When placed in the context of photographs from Project Diaspora, football can be characterised as a “double-edged nemesis” of African people. As football began to grow worldwide, skilful African footballers became a source of benefit for European clubs as big amounts of money were being generated from the sport. [16] The sport is part of many African countrys’ national culture, and Diop comments on Africa’s continued “use” by Western countries for economic benefits. [17][18]  As Diop noted in an interview with The Guardian, “When you look at the way that the African soccer royalty is perceived in Europe, there is a very interesting blend of glory, hero-worship and exclusion....It’s that kind of paradox I am investigating in the work.” Football has allowed players, as Felicia Feaster noted in her review of Diop’s photographs, “a kind of social mobility also offered these historic figures...”. [19] The movement of the African diaspora has continued to expand through the opportunities for footballers to play with European teams. [20] Yet just as the historical figures, these modern individuals lack freedom of movement due to their African identities in Western spaces. Diop, therefore, utilises football for its tokenism of African culture to expose the coloniser as a symbol of profit and privilege.

Diop engages with the items in a way that makes them appear very naturally in the portraits. In his portrait titled Albert Badin (1747 or 1750 - 1822), he recreates a portrait of an African nicknamed Badin, which means ‘mischief-maker’ or ‘trickster’. [Figure 4] As elaborated in the description of the photograph, he was originally a slave and butler of the first Queen Louisa Ulrika of Prussia and then the Princess of Sweden Sophia Albertine. [21] In the original portrait, Badin holds a chess piece with his thumb and index finger, while his other hand grasps the chessboard itself. [22] His charismatic smile seems to be reimagined in Diop’s playful stare, and in his hands, Diop has replaced chess pieces for a whistle and a red card. Straightaway, this image reflects similar characteristics to depictions of saints with their attributed symbols. Making this particular painting noticeable for its symbols of the whistle and red card.

Roland Barthes exploration of signs from his chapter titled Rhetoric of the Image from ‘Image-Music-Text’ would interpret the football qualities of Badin as having multiple layers of meaning. Just like Barthes analysis of the advertisement of the infamous Italian advertisement he explores in his text, the interconnected elements of Project Diaspora involve “...the knowledge on which the sign depends is heavily cultural.” [23] He would designate the portrait as a whole as the ‘sign’, the ‘signified’ would be the African diaspora and the ‘signifier’ would be the football motifs. As established, football can be interpreted as a stereotypical symbol of Africa, hence the red card and whistle possess the cohabitation of what Barthes deems both a denotational and connotation message. [24] Denotational, in the sense of the literal meaning behind what the word football suggests, and connotation because of the feelings that arise from the personal interpretation of the primary meaning. Furthermore, Barthes argues that the image as a whole consists of a ‘function’. [25] Diop’s intentions, or through Barthes arguments, his ‘meaning’ is therefore endowed in the image through these ‘signs’ of football.

As Diop noted, “Even in the art world, though, as an African artist, you can be treated as the exotic other.” [26] While the portraits don’t have a linguistic element to them, language does not necessarily have to be verbal, as Barthes makes clear. The image, already a “resurrection”, already inhabits a (historical) meaning. Various aspects of African culture was simplified to an ethnocentric perception of the continent by the Western gaze. Therefore, the football quality of the photographs is humouristic, in a way, because they show that Africans continue to be utilised by the West as pawns for capitalist and overall economic means. However, Diop in some ways plays into this stereotype, and ‘takes back’ this trope and uses it as a tool of empowerment.

Project Diaspora is a goal-orientated, active endeavour to decolonise the historical African individual in the present, and the visual display of the interaction between Africa and the rest of the world was Diop’s inspiration. While not technically an individual of the diaspora, he experienced the similar sensations of a physical displacement that so many diaspora and their ancestors experienced.

Through Project Diaspora, Diop maps the ontological connection between the historical figures and the contemporary African diasporic identity. He recreates the portraits in a way that is approachable to the modern viewer in order to show how their stories continue to resonate in modern times. Independent art critic Bansie Vasvani described him as “an ambassador for reframing the African black male from a historically omitted vantage point.” [27] The collection of these photographs show the immense movement Africans have been experiencing since the beginning of time. He, therefore, contextualises the pan-African qualities of current diasporic philosophy by representing the interconnectedness of Africans across generations. In the future, Diop also wants to extend this project into figures of Asia, the Middle East and the Americas in order to further explore the influences of migration. [28]

Diop’s series presents this in the amalgamation of various eras, places and bodies shows the three-dimensionality of African history within the global discourse. His series thus created a hybrid space that provided a panoptic view of the history of the African movement. Furthermore, Diop very deliberately chose figures from the 15th to 19th century in order to retell these untold stories of African heroes, allowing him to reapproach the power dynamic between the coloniser and the colonised by reframing the historical Black figures through himself. Diop invokes what Cere would label a ‘mapping’ of the diaspora and these figures reflect a navigation between two worlds and Diop articulated in the use of football equipment. [29] As noted previously about Fanon’s dynamic of Black and White individuals, it is the football element that is used to move away from the Western European gaze. Diop successfully regains and revives the stories of these African legends, allowing their stories to continue to inspire the modern generation of Africa, the diaspora and beyond.