Henry is a London based visual artist born and bred in Jamaica. He has worked in film and photography in both Jamaica and the UK. Growing up in a predominantly black country where he learnt to play, love and laugh together with black faces in black places, he seeks to capture the black body in myriad forms. In addition to working with numerous commercial clients, such as Puma and Google, his work has been featured in Plantain magazine and exhibited at Kings College in London.
In this session, we will be talking with Afe Abeni and Henry Robinson about their collaborative photography project. The photos in this series explores the use of the body as language and the freedom that nature allows. We will discuss the experience of queerness and coming into one’s body and how photography allows for one to be seen, and functions as a freeze frame of Afe’s transition journey deeper into himself.
Improvisational Movement Artist and Poet, Afé Abeni is a recent graduate from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica. Having completed a BFA in Performance and Choreography, he has seen reflections of an indulgence in the once feared art form, Dance. His work encompasses representation of his journey home to himself, having been disconnected all his life. Abeni’s creative process is subjective to and heavily dependent on a cathartic approach with light shed on the extremes of his emotional experiences, responses and expression. Afé Abeni advocates for mental health by creating space for unfiltered expression and sharing of those experiences leading the medium, Art. He also seeks to take up space in that regard by being unapologetically his body’s greatest occupant, and leaps into greater new experiences with panic coexisting with the greatest bulk of excitement for love, healing and visibility. Afé Abeni, a non-conforming transman represents boldness in vulnerability and his work.