Afro Futurism Visions

CHICAGO- "This week we lost a fantastic person, scholar, art educator and visual art deity with the passing of Ms Barbara Jones Hogu. I had an amazing and positive connection with her since 1971 that included collegial exchanges of political insights and shared mutual creative practices along with appreciations. We met at a Black Arts Guild exhibition where she was pleased to learn that at age 18 I had organized young talented visual artist into a dynamic guild.  We called ourselves B.A.G. Decades later she even directed and produced a video document on the Black Age of Comics, called "Telling Our Stories. ( On Youtube ) . Unlike many other other Black Nationalistic or "fine" artists, she attended the first and many more annual Black Age of Comics convention in Chicago. She saw the whole value of the Chicago-centric Black Arts Movement as it expanded the entire world of the visual arts and related creativity. I, we, her family, the art world will miss her. But we are all so much better for her presence in our lives. " Prof. Onli

Above: "Unite" by Barbara Jones-Hogu, 1968, screenprint  Below: "Relate, Not Self Hate"

Barbara Jones-Hogu was born on April 17, 1938 in Chicago. She received bachelor's degrees from Howard University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MFA from the Institute of Design in Chicago. She was a member of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), the group that executed the famous "Wall of Respect" urban mural in Chicago, in 1967.  An event and influential art form that outlives the recent self-hate induced nonsense of being "Post-Black". In 1968, she was a co-founder of the artist collective AfriCOBRA.  Named long before the limited trendy term of "Afrofuturism.  She taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Malcolm X College.
Her work is in several public museum collections including the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Museum of African American Culture and History, the National Civil Rights Museum, and others. Jones-Hogu will be the subject of a solo museum exhibition at the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, opening on January 11, 2018. She leaves behind her only son Kuumba Hogu. Barbara passed peacefully in her sleep on November 14, 2017.