Hebru Brantley

Hebru Brantley’s young characters are headstrong and ambitious. They appear across canvas, murals and sculpture, often adorned in suits and masks that reference fictional icons like Batman and the Incredible Hulk. As a child, Brantley did not see himself or his friends represented in the comic books and sci-fi stories that he loved. The majority of the narratives centred around one all-powerful figure who was the incarnation of a white male. Critical of this, Brantley translates all that he admires about superheroes into archetypal characters who represent people of colour in an amalgamation of street art, Manga and Pop Art. In parallel, Brantley also paints his artistic heroes, with Jean Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol making appearances on canvas.

The Watch (2013) is a public installation on Michigan Avenue in the heart of Chicago’s art district. Having grown up in Chicago, Brantley uses the public sculpture to highlight the beauty of the city and its people, while also acknowledging the difficulties and violences for young communities within it. In addition, the character’s oversized pilot goggles reference The Tuskegee Airmen, the first group of African American and Caribbean-born pilots who fought in the Second World War. By incorporating these fragments of lived reality into fantastical storylines, Brantley continues the legacies of Afrofuturism to imagine new possible futures.