Counternarratives of Nationalist Anti-Black Images: Normalizing and Extolling Blackness in Contemporary Art of the Hispanic Caribbean

Abstract

This article examines contemporary art of the Hispanic Caribbean as a counternarrative to the antiblack aesthetic ideals in the region. By exploring beauty standards on these islands through quotidian language and images that portray beauty, the prolif- eration of whiteness as the epitome of the aesthetic is exhibited in modern day Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba. This article follows the work of scholars who have theorized and evidenced that the post-independence narrative has dominated the islands’ perceived racial identities, marginalizing blackness and praising whiteness. We add that this discourse has also impacted its peoples’ daily beauty rituals, as most of them facilitate the ‘whitening’ of one’s appearance. Present-day art that extolls blackness and questions the exclusion of people of African descent on the islands thus serves as a powerful truth reveal; contrarily to the official history, negritude is not rebellion, rather it is the region’s nature and beauty. In other words, this research seeks to explore how this art portrays negritude as the face of the Hispanic Caribbean, normalizing and celebrating the appearance of the majority of its people.