While Fanon spoke about the black body as a phobogenic object - a source of anxiety and fear, bell hooks speaks about the black male as desired, but not loved. In posing the question ‘when and how did you become a black man?’ Philadelphia-based artist Shikeith’s open-format experimental documentary #Blackmendream (2015), explores constructions of black male identity in America today and establishes a ‘safe space’ online for discussion using the eponymous hashtag via Twitter. HBM extended this line of questioning, asking where does the needle point today?
Expanding the hashtag to a UK context (#BlackmendreamLDN), the collective HOT BLACK MALES invited black male artists and cultural figures including Gaika, Shabaka Hutchings, Isaac Kariuki, James Massiah and Irvin Pascale to contribute their thoughts - talking burdens and strengths, obstacles and opportunities, group mentality, intersectionality, fetishisation, support structures, and projecting new horizons for the future.
