Art Musings

Mikael Chukwuma Owunna, a queer Nigerian-Swedish artist raised in Pittsburgh, has spent the past two and a half years photographing Black men and women for a series titled Infinite Essence. Hand-painted using fluorescent paints and photographed in complete darkness, Owunna’s subjects are illuminated by a flash outfitted with a UV filter, which turns their nude bodies into glowing celestial figures.

Owunna tells Colossal that the series was his response to the frequent images and videos of Black people being killed by those sworn to protect them: the police. The photographer’s friends, family members, dancers, and one person he connected with on Instagram serve as models for the project, which is named after an idea from his Igbo heritage. “All of our individual spirits are just one ray of the infinite essence of the sun,” Owunna explains. “By transcending the visible spectrum, I work to illuminate a world beyond our visible structures of racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia where the black body is free.”

A black woman will lead the third largest city in America, elected by voters who said they wanted change and the symbolism of a new era of politics in segregated Chicago.

Lori Lightfoot has never held office but won all 50 of the city’s wards in a crushing landslide on Tuesday.

Lightfoot’s win breaks race and gender barriers, and she’s openly gay with a wife and daughter. On the campaign trail, she leaned into her blue-collar roots growing up in a deeply segregated Ohio steel town. In her acceptance speech, Lightfoot invoked the legendary Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor and others.

“I stand on the shoulders of so many. The shoulders of strong, black women, like Ida B. Wells, Gwendolyn Brooks and Annie Ruth Lowery. The shoulders of LGBTQ+ trailblazers, like Dr. Ron Sable, Vernita Gray and Art Johnston,” Lightfoot said.

She’s the former president of the Chicago police board, and also a former corporate attorney and federal prosecutor. Her message of “bring in the light” resonated with voters who raged against the local Democratic Party machine, notorious in Chicago for dynastic politics, patronage hiring and corruption.

“People felt like this is a moment where we can try something new. We can possibly go in a different direction, and we can represent to the world that we need something fresh,” said Cathy J. Cohen, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.

Lightfoot’s election is the latest in a record number of black women elected mayor in the nation’s 100 largest cities. Lightfoot will become the eighth such woman to lead one of those cities, Chicago being the largest, when she takes office in May.

The movement has been swift. Just five years ago, there was only one black woman leading any of the nation’s top 100 cities.

A Record Number Of Black Women Are Becoming Mayor Of Major Cities

Back in the 1960s, a Harvard graduate student made a landmark discovery about anger.

At age 34, Jean Briggs traveled above the Arctic Circle and lived out on the tundra for 17 months. There were no roads, no heating systems, no grocery stores. Winter temperatures could easily dip below minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

Briggs persuaded an Inuit family to “adopt” her and “try to keep her alive,” as the anthropologist wrote in 1970.

At the time, many Inuit families lived similar to the way their ancestors had for thousands of years. They built igloos in the winter and tents in the summer. “And we ate only what the animals provided, such as fish, seal and caribou,” says Myna Ishulutak, a film producer and language teacher who lived a similar lifestyle as a young girl.

Briggs quickly realized something remarkable was going on in these families: The adults had an extraordinary ability to control their anger.

“They never acted in anger toward me, although they were angry with me an awful lot,” Briggs told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in an interview.

Even just showing a smidgen of frustration or irritation was considered weak and childlike, Briggs observed.

For instance, one time someone knocked a boiling pot of tea across the igloo, damaging the ice floor. No one changed their expression. “Too bad,” the offender said calmly and went to refill the teapot.

In another instance, a fishing line — which had taken days to braid — immediately broke on the first use. No one flinched in anger. “Sew it together,” someone said quietly.

By contrast, Briggs seemed like a wild child, even though she was trying very hard to control her anger. “My ways were so much cruder, less considerate and more impulsive,” she told the CBC. “[I was] often impulsive in an antisocial sort of way. I would sulk or I would snap or I would do something that they never did.”

Briggs, who died in 2016, wrote up her observations in her first book, Never in Anger. But she was left with a lingering question: How do Inuit parents instill this ability in their children? How do Inuit take tantrum-prone toddlers and turn them into cool-headed adults?

Then in 1971, Briggs found a clue.

How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger