“Imagining a Better Place”: A Conversation with Masiyaleti Mbewe about Revolutionizing and Constructing Black Futures

Masiyaleti Mbewe is a Zambian queerfuturist writer, photographer, and activist raised in Botswana and currently based in Namibia. Her photographic work in the Future African Vision in Time (FAVT) exhibition entitled The Afrofuturist Village navigates an alternative future for Africans in Afrofuturism. This first exhibit addressed environmentalism, feminism, mental health, technology, language, sexuality, gender, and accessibility and inclusivity. It included a hybrid language, braille, and sign language. Future exhibits—The Afrofuturist Town, The Afrofuturist City, and The Afrofuturist Metropolis—will continue this work.

MASIYALETI MBEWE, “TOVE THE GUARDIAN,” NIKO N D7000, 3/4 (FIRST EDITION), 2018

Here she discusses her artistic work, her evolving understanding of Afrofuturism, and her reading, viewing, and listening recommendations.

Michelle Johnson:

Should I ask you for your personal definition of Afrofuturism, or, instead, should we be speaking in terms of Pan-African futurism?

Masiyaleti Mbewe:

My thoughts around Afrofuturism are constantly expanding, but I always return to Ytasha Womack’s definition. I think it very succinctly touches on the many intersections of Black diasporic futurist concerns. When I sat with Philipp Khabo Koepsell, I think we were trying to unpack or, rather, reconcile the myriad of complicated feelings we had with the term and its coining. I think we collectively settled on Pan-African futurism because of the underlying political implications; it encouraged a sort of solidarity with Black people around the world and further recognized the disparities with our lived experiences.

One might ask if the term Afrofuturism didn’t already do that, and I think our initial understanding of the term and its alignment with mostly the African American experience flattened the ways Africans on the continent and in the diaspora engaged with the concept. I think what Nnedi Okorafor did when coining Africanfuturism a year later also similarly identified these nuances, but I find that it is often difficult to discuss these things without sparking a diaspora war of sorts.

Johnson:

How have your thoughts on Afrofuturism evolved from your 2015 Ted Talk to today? While doing research for this interview, I’ve become captivated by the way you continue to expand inclusion.

Mbewe:

I was twenty-four when I stood on the TEDx stage, and I was excited to finally have the language to talk about how marginalized Black voices were in science fiction, fantasy, etc., and tracing how these different genres had their roots in traditional African mythology and spirituality was another incredibly validating thing to come out of the experience. I’m in my thirties now and am still very cognizant of that when I’m working. Because of the talk, I’m now in community with an amazing group of Black activists, scholars, and artists (Ingrid LaFleur, Alexander G. Weheliye, Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja, Philipp Khabo Koepsell, and many more) who operate in these spaces that are constantly revolutionizing and constructing Black futures. But yes, the more I worked and grew, the more I wanted my work to be inclusive and intersectional. There was no way I was going to write about or make visual art about Black people and have my work replicate exclusionary politics.

Johnson:

In an interview elsewhere, you mentioned your trajectory—pan-African futurism, then postfuturism, and now queer futurism, “which incorporates all of those things for me.” How does queer futurism do this?

Mbewe:

Queerfuturism is a term I’m most comfortable with at the moment because it actively reflects who I continuously want to center in my work, Black queer folk. When I was talking about postfuturism, I think I was in the process of theorizing what Black futurism would look like outside of the capitalist excitement that came with Afrofuturism’s popularity. The future is pro-Black, queer, and anticapitalist, so I think the word queer obscures the way we approach things with rigidity sometimes. I like to think of my work here as some type of fluid, and queerness permits me that.

Johnson:

What alternative future for Africans did you envision in your 2018 exhibition, The Afrofuturist Village?

Mbewe:

I...