Ariel Jackson: The Origin of the Blues

Multidisciplinary artist Ariel Jackson creates alternate dimensions, narratives, and characters to unpack the larger systemic issues and traumas that have formed her experience as a Black woman and the experiences of other people of color in the United States. Her work follows in the Afrofuturist tradition, a movement that combines science fiction, fantasy, and Afrocentric references to develop empowered, otherworldly narratives. In The Origin of the Blues (2015), Jackson’s alter ego—Confuserella—journeys from the fictional world of Panfrika to Plastica to study the history, conditions, and beginnings of blues music. Jackson juxtaposes archival footage of racially oriented violence with images from everyday Black life to further reveal the unsettling coexistence of the brutal and the mundane in Black communities.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.