'African Arts' Review: "Heroes" Publication

Review by Mark Auslander

The publication that accompanied Heroes received a thoughtful review from scholar Mark Auslander in the summer 2024 edition of African Arts.

The medium is the message
here: bright colors, flashy imagery, comic
book-style fonts, and commentary in the
style of LP record liner notes evoke what
Robert Farris Thompson (1973) dubbed
an “aesthetic of the cool,” a distinctive
pan-African sensibility that is polyrhythmic,
highly immersive, and predicated on the
free-flowing circulation of intersubjective
experience and energies between audience,
artist, and performer.

Dumouchelle cleverly integrates the familiar genre of the art catalogue with the look and feel of a graphic
novel, recalling the dynamism of superherocomics series. The book also has the look and feel of some of the greatest African and diasporic musical albums, from Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s Black President and King
Sunny Ade’s Juju to Bob Marley and the Wailer’s Exodus. Appropriately, the volume is presented in conjunction with an irresistible musical playlist...

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