Dark Continent by Lina Viktor
The creations of British-Liberian artist, Lina Iris Viktor, tells a simple and powerful message of being Black. Viktor uses signatures that have been put together so well to create a holistic picture and message that is uniquely hers. She focuses on portraiture, featuring her beautiful self - steeping into her history in performance arts. Within this, she weaves in her signature 24-carat gold work, infusing the spiritual properties of this pure gold to which ancient African societies attributed powerful properties. But behind, within and above all this, she uses the colour Black.
“Black to me is one of the noblest colours”
You really can’t get away from it in Viktor’s work. Such darkness is not a palette you see often with artists, but Viktor has clearly embraced it in many of her artistic series. This is because she is showing the world that the colour Black is the source of everything - before the Big Bang, all was black, but life was clearly in this substance. Viktor takes this premise smoothly into the concept of Africa as the ‘Black Continent’, a term that colonialist used to depict both the ‘savagery’ of the locals and the colour of their skin. But again, this Black Continent has also been scientifically proven to be the source of life.
The best way to say all this is to show you. See some of Viktor’s beautifully dark works below.
