Named after Cheryl Lynn’s 1977 queer anthem, To Be Real presented neo-Cubist portraits in expressive frames drawing from ballroom divas, haute couture, and African art. The exhibition featured Ansista, a 3-D figure suspended in a Vogue dance dip combining non-binary aesthetics with traditional African and drag ballroom elements. At the conceptual center was Being, Newsome’s cloud-based A.I. child programmed with works by radical authors and theorists, including Paulo Freire, Michel Foucault, and bell hooks, exploring individual agency and historical oppression.

“Historically, Black people function inadvertently as queer objects,” said Newsome. “When we came to America, we weren’t human beings but things of some sort, neither occupying the classic subject nor object position. As a result, we occupied a peculiar non-binary space of ‘being’ which has disturbing analogies to the queer space inhabited by robots.”

Exhibition Press Release

Related Programming

The exhibition opened concurrently with the Museum of the African Diaspora’s presentation of Newsome’s Stop Playing In My Face! and Icon, focusing on video works inspired by vogue dance. During opening week, Fort Mason Art presented Newsome’s immersive performance Running, an abstract portrait composed for light and voice.

Exhibition Organization

Rashaad Newsome: To Be Real was jointly presented by Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture and San Francisco Art Institute.

To Be Real was originally commissioned by New York Live Arts’ Live Feed Residency Program in collaboration with Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, with generous support from The William Penn Foundation and De Buck Gallery. The Live Feed creative residency program supports and nurtures the development of new work with residencies and commissions generated over two years. Lead support of Live Feed is generously provided by Partners for New Performance and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.