Pratiksha Shome
PJ Harper, a mixed-race youngster who passed for white while growing up in Scotland, encountered covert prejudice and overt racism, which inspired him to embrace his blackness. He explained, “I can draw inspiration from characters from mythology, history, or modern culture, and then I consider how I envision this person or being would be presented in my reality. He imagines Black women in his sculptures and drawings as beautiful glamazons; their glamour can conceal how aggressive the sculptures are as objects, expressing an uncompromising might through the force of internet aesthetics: like sirens, they entice you in.
Harper was fascinated by dolls from a young age and started building his own as a toddler, turning his pastime into a complex practice. After a brief stay at Glasgow School of Art, he started selling his work online. He received commissions from celebrities like R&B singer Elah Hale and film director Lee Daniels, which inspired him to drop out of art school and focus solely on his work. By confronting racism and power through a prism that elevates Black strength and beauty to godlike status, he creates his busts and full figures from polymer clay and presents them in contexts ranging from rethought mythology to sex scenes. This whole thing is about appreciating the feminine, he remarked. I abstain from drag. Making is how I express myself, and this is how I express my appreciation.
Courtesy: Art in America
Harper’s ambition to elevate Black people from supporting roles to stardom serves as one source of motivation. He grew up loving sword-and-sandal films with his late grandfather, the twice Mr Universe Paul Wynter. Although he was impressed by his achievement, he would have preferred to see him in a lead part as opposed to recurring in “helper” roles. All of the characters exist in Harper’s imaginative universe as super-beings that are reminiscent of both Blaxploitation films from the 1970s and ancient Greek stories.
With an homage to the Greek story, Harper’s Instagram handle, Pig.malion, has amassed nearly 100,000 followers; now, his online popularity has translated to the real world: He held a solo exhibition at Good Black Art in New York last December. He claimed that the strength of his work “originally stems from [particular] influences. The manner a piece was made then acquires a completely new power of its own when I finish working on it.
Source: Art in America
