the blue horizontal line:

the vision of Dominique McClellan

the blue horizontal line: the vision of Dominique McClellan

I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees / I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees / Asked the Lord above, "Have mercy, now, save poor Bob if you please" - Robert Johnson, Crossroads Blues

Through the overlay of all, the dancer is equipped to access the spiritual power needed for the crossing. This fluid space is a crossroads or a locus to generate a new thing, a third ontological space, a break where possibility exists. Remembrance of a cultural identity interior to the “crossing serve not only to fortify culture upon the initial arrival to the western hemisphere; they also persist as cultural essentials to ensure African people’s continued survival. [1]  - Dr. Kokahvah Zauditu- Selassie   

the blue horizontal line: the vision of Dominique McClellan is a documentation of one man’s intimate relationship with New Orleans, amid COVID-19 and civil unrest. In this exhibition, Dominique McClellan uses photography as an entry point to encounter a multitude of realities despite the void. The works selected invite the viewer to engage in a tradition of entering a “third ontological space”, which has served as a means of way finding for African diasporic people. Born in Mississippi, actor, director, and photographer, Dominique McClellan learned early on the healing power of song and performance. The desire to speak for those who are unable to brought him to New Orleans. A city unlike any other especially as it relates to convergence of the African influences in the western hemisphere. Enslaved Peoples from West Africa and the Caribbean brought their many traditions infused with African based cosmology, which, in turn, became the foundation for American culture as it is known today. 

Guided by a creative impulse, McClellan felt called to visit the French Quarter to document this unprecedented time. Wanting to challenge himself, McClellan captured this dystopian moment with only an iPhone. The legacy of performance culture serves as a grounding theme throughout the series. World-renowned artists occupied the same spaces captured in his photographs. During slavery, reconstruction, civil rights, black power, and all the moments in between Black Cultural Production has continued to serve as a foundation for Black life. McClellan's photos capture the multiple layers of relationship, not only the human subjects themselves seen and unseen, but the landscape as well, the buildings, hollow streets, and many shades of blue light. The lights serve as a signifier of his relationship with the French Quarter and his own passion for performance art. Black artistic traditions have always existed at the edge of two worlds, pleasure and pain, freedom and oppression, the living and the dead. These traditions are more than entertainment; they constitute a form of resistance, one that continues to be a lifeline for the African diaspora. Many forms of black cultural expression were born within this liminal space, also known as the crossroads. Several blues musicians are known for explicitly referring to crossroads, voodoo, or hoodoo beliefs, which are iterations of West African spiritual traditions.  The origin story of "the blues" as a genre is heavily debated. Scholars have cited the music as sad songs born out of the hardships of slavery though partly true; this context is incomplete without an understanding of African cosmology and worldview. 

The crossroads is a through-line in various Afro-diasporic artistic mediums. "In folklore and mythology, the crossroads represents a location "between the worlds" and, as such, a site where supernatural spirits can be contacted, and paranormal events can take place." [2] “Scholar Wyatt MacGarffey and Robert Farris Thompson describe the Kongo Cosmogram, or Yowa as a symbol that does not signify a Christian crucifixion; it signifies a circular journey of the human soul around the intersecting lines at its center.” [3]

In Nettrice R Gaskins’ article “The African Cosmogram Matrix in Contemporary Art and Culture,” she explains Bluesman Robert Johnson’s Crossroad Blues lyrics. 

“What is clear in the song is that, after some sort of trouble, the speaker has reached a turning point at the crossroads. He is turning himself over to a stronger force and calling to God for help. In the Kongo Cosmogram his soul would be positioned at the horizontal line that divides the world of the living (heaven and earth) from the kingdom of the dead (underworld).” [4]

Using the Kongo Cosmogram as a framework for the lyrics, Johnson is now communing with the spirit realm to navigate his current reality.  the blue horizontal line: the vision of Dominique McClellan is a visual exercise in remembering what was as well as what can be. In this complicated political and social moment, there is a desire to remember and repurpose ancient technologies for survival.  McClellan’s sojourn back to a critical turning point in his journey as an artist stands at a crossroad, one of remembering, mourning, and possibility. 

The need to document this moment in New Orleans was deeply personal to McClellan. Before he began his career as a filmmaker, McClellan came to New Orleans to sing. Starting as a street performer he worked at some of the same clubs pictured in his works. His time spent on Bourbon Street gave him an intimate understanding of what the absence of the essence of the city means for so many people. Upon reflecting on his works, McClellan grappled with questions such as what happens to a city like New Orleans when there are no festivals, street performances, or live venues? What happens to all the people whose survival is dependent on an economy that is dependent black culture?  As the virus began to progress in early March, the old saying that when ‘white folks get the flu, black folks get pneumonia’ became even more relevant. COVID-19 devastated the Black and Latinx communities nationwide, with New York, Detroit, and New Orleans being some of the hardest impacted cities as it relates to deaths per capita. On top of an unfathomable loss of life, there also came an economic toll not seen since the Great Depression. In a Slate article written by Henry Grabar, "How Long Can New Orleans Survive Without Live Music?" the author reiterates what creatives such as McClellan already knew; Arts and Culture drive the local economy [5]. In a predominantly Black city where the work of culture bearers and creatives make up roughly 15% of the labor force, the stay at home order continues to have a debilitating effect that is not yet measured. 

In late May as the nation struggled to grapple with the magnitude of the moment, the video of George Floyd’s murder was released. The country then exploded first in Minneapolis, and like a domino effect, cities across the nation followed suit as rage ripped through the streets, calling for similar demands that have been made for generations. In less than a week, tens of thousands of people throughout the country took to streets and recentered the Black Lives Matter Movement in the national conversation. Within the endless lines of inquiry regarding this crisis, urgent questions are emerging as it relates to the black artist, “what role does the creative play now?” “What have we learned from our ancestors?”  What are the possibilities at the crossroads? 

The photographs selected in ‘the blue horizontal line’ not only capture a moment in time, but also what brought Dominique McClellan and so many others to New Orleans. As a truth-teller, McClellan’s motivation for this series was to lift the experiences of performance artists who are now unable to create as they did before. However, despite the silence in the street, there is also the presence of possibility and the responsibility of remembering. “The Kongo Cosmogram, kalunga line, and the crossroads form a radial point of African cultural improvisation that has profoundly seeded African Atlantic creative expression and cultural production.” [6] It has been stated that when one is at crossroads, there is a thinning of the veil,  and one is closer to the spirit realm. Although this moment is new, it is also not. Black people have navigated unspeakable hardships through their time in the western hemisphere. “These opportunities at this sacred carrefour provide Black people with the ability to create solutions for the crisis at hand.” [7] Black Art has always been functional and never for the sake of itself. 

The production of these new works has inspired McClellan to reimagine his work. Using the current landscape, his journey through the process has potentially inspired a return to performance. As Black people nationwide work to reimagine a new future for themselves, there is an opportunity to lead with this ancient knowing and impulse that can be accessed through the portal of the creative process. Positioning 2020 at the crossroads is to envision what might be for the individual and the collective, and provides artist-activists such as Dominique McClellan with endless possibilities.  

[1] Zauditu-Selassie, Kokahvah “Dancing Between Two Realms: Sacred Resistance and Remembrance in African American Culture.” The Journal of Interreligious Studies  no. 23 (2018) 58. http://www.irsstudies.org

[2] Gaskins, Nettrice R. “The African Cosmogram Matrix in Contemporary Art and Culture.” Black Theology 14, no. 1 (2016): 3. https://doi.org

[3] Gaskins, et al,, Black Theology, 2

[4] Gaskins, et al,, Black Theology, 1

[5]  Grabar, Henry. “How Long Can New Orleans Survive Without Live Music?” Slate Magazine. Slate, July 24, 2020. https://slate.com/technology/2020/07/new-orleans-covid-pandemic-live-music.html.

[6] Gaskins, et al,, Black Theology, 3

[7] Zauditu-Selassie, The Journal of Interreligious Studies, 61

Click here to read “FRENCHMEN & BOURBON: An interview with Dominique McClellan”