Jon Key begins Black, Queer, & Untold: A New Archive of Designers, Artists, & Trailblazers, his survey of Black Queer cultural production focused on print media with a simple but profound dedication: “to the ancestors, known and unknown.”
It is a specific Queer imperative to grow up understanding the weight of omission of what is hidden away, buried, denied, or simply left unsaid.
Based on his intersectional existence, Key identifies what he refers to as a rubric reflective of his own lived experience and interests as an artist: Southern, Black, Queer, and Family. This personal lens then informs a series of questions that foregrounded his own design efforts out of school, while developing his professional practice: What were the connections and lineage of Black and/or Queer publications? Who were the designers and typesetters through time that recorded Black Queer life?
Key is careful to note that his research is obsessive but not exhaustive, or definitive. He goes so far as to hope that this major contribution might inspire others to add to the conversation, recognizing the limits of colonial histories, and offering the understanding that what is unknown is as infinite as the margins that keep us from achieving due recognition.
Organized chronologically across six sections, Key’s research takes readers from the 19th century through to today, carefully weaving socio-history with the technical developments in the industry.
Key is, first and foremost, a practitioner. His deep knowledge of and engagement with design is a subplot to witnessing the work of other Black Queer designers, publishers, and artists, from Abolitionist newspapers to journals that chronicled the Harlem Renaissance as well as the Civil Rights Movement to the countercultural placards and glossy magazines of the 1970s, the turmoil of 1980s and ’90s with AIDS as a backdrop mainly through ’zines, and finally our current digital era with an emphasis on the democratization of Queer networks/spaces.
As engrossed in his research as Key has had to be to deliver this 400-plus page tome, his approachable writing style is balanced to deliver the important facts mixed with his own personal narrative. From his time growing up in Seale, Alabama to college in Rhode Island and then life in New York, Key’s personal narrative is woven throughout this study as witness to the socio-cultural milestones in his lifetime and those of his relatives. Reinforcing this personal perspective are images of Key’s original artworks and in particular a series of paintings interpreting the historical information pulled from his research.
A chapter towards the end of this book, Building on the Legacy, allows for footnotes that don’t fit so neatly into a chronological reading of cultural production, where it is noted, “Typefaces, publications, exhibition designs, logos, and murals become objects of Queerness and self-actualization.” Here, Key turns his eye to the future, noting colleagues whose work is inspirational within the design industry.
Key’s approach is inherently self-reflexive, and through his prose we are reminded of his own journey as he reflects on the massive strides Black Queer contributors have made to the zeitgeist over the past century and more. Black, Queer, & Untold is essential reading for any of us interested in where social histories intersect with art and design. ■
Black, Queer, & Untold: A New Archive of Designers, Artists, & Trailblazers by Jon Key will be in Canadian bookstores this fall
OTHER ART BOOK REVIEWS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED
- Bookmark: New Book about Bertram Brooker
- The Role of Textiles in Relation to Art
- The Quest for the Meaning of Art
- Quick Pick - J.E.H. MacDonald: Up Close
- Mary Pratt: A Love Affair with Vision
- The Role of Textiles in Relation to Art
- Surreal Spaces: The Art and Life of Leonora Carrington
- Early Days: Indigenous Art from the McMichael
- Bianca Bosker: The Quest for the Meaning of Art
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