Carnegie Hall

With the ascendance of Afrofuturism into mainstream popular culture comes the danger of commercial appropriation and the potential loss of Afrofuturism’s meaning and intracultural vocabulary. However, an understanding of Afrofuturist concepts—such as cultural race design studies, afro fantasy realism, and the difference between steamfunk and Dieselfunk—fosters a greater respect and appreciation for Afrofuturism as a sociopolitical cultural genre.

We consulted experts to help create the following glossary, which aims to provide people with a deeper understanding of the multifaceted nature of Afrofuturism.

Afrixa

The metaphysical and spiritual internet, operating outside of space and time and independent of geographical or historical location, providing melaninated people with access to ancient knowledge and wisdom and continuously activating through various forms of artistic meditation.
—Quentin VerCetty

afro-entomology

This peculiar Afrofuturism subseries is a visual study of ethno-entomology that fuses images of indigenous Africans with various insects from around the world, creating a new imaginary species of mystical creatures called AfroAnimorphs. Afro-entomology sheds light on the importance of the interdependence of various life forms of all sizes in nature.
—Jessi Jumanji

afro fantasy realism

A genre of art in which cultural themes of the African diaspora are represented in a dream-like, imaginary style. While elements and environments are rendered in a way that is naturalistic and true to life, they are juxtaposed against situations and subjects that are impossible or improbable in the known world.
—Sheeba Maya

Afrofuturism 2.0

Contemporary Afrofuturism is how African peoples locate themselves in time and space with agency. Specifically, it is the early-21st–century technogenesis (co-evolution of humans and technology) of Black identity comprising counter-histories, the hacking and/or appropriation of the influence of network software, database logic, cultural analytics, deep remixability, neurosciences, enhancement and augmentation, gender fluidity, posthuman possibility, and the speculative sphere, with transdisciplinary application as a transnational, diasporic, techno-cultural, Pan-African movement characterized by five dimensions that include metaphysics, aesthetics, theoretical and applied science, social science, and programmatic spaces.
—Reynaldo Anderson and Charles E. Jones

Astro-Blackness

An Afrofuturist concept in which a person's Black state of consciousness, released from the confining and crippling slave or colonial mentality, becomes aware of the multitude and varied possibilities and probabilities with the universe.
—Andrew Rollins

BauHop

A multi-modal practice that fuses hip-hop’s five primary elements with sacred geometry, African history, and Black speculative thought to analyze, deconstruct, and reconfigure traditional Bauhaus design aesthetics. As a diasporic African power system, BauHop is a template that builds Black autonomous futures through liberation theories and narratives by considering critical race design’s intersections of visual anthropology, critical race theory, and speculative design as a cohesive critical making practice.
—John Jennings and Stacey Robinson

Black speculative art

A creative, aesthetic practice that integrates African or African diasporic metaphysics with science or technology, and seeks to interpret, engage, design, or alter reality for the reimagination of the past and the contested present, and act as a catalyst for the future.
—Reynaldo Anderson

conjure-punk

Speculative narratives that are situated and created within Black Southern spaces by merging the cultural practices, aesthetics, and folkloric technologies of rootwork and conjure with the tropes and world-building affordances of Black cyberpunk (cyberfunk).
—John Jennings

creolization

A hybridization of African cultural traditions and those of the new world of the Americas as a means of survival, subversive rebellion, and autonomy from those that would be oppressors. For example, the creolization of common Western symbolic objects of wealth and status—jewels, lace, velvet, etc.—psychologically elevate the subjects who wear them and encourage acceptance, expanded perception, and expectation. These subjects are inserted into the past of an alternate reality, creating a narrative in which they are their ancestors in their present, which their heirs will witness in the future. These ancestors embody power over destiny, representation, and spirit, influencing those who witness them as their descendants.
—Tokie Rome-Taylor

critical race design studies

An interdisciplinary design practice that intersects critical race theory, speculative design, design history, and critical making to analyze and critique the effects of visual communication, graphic objects, and their associated systemic mediations of racial identity.
—John Jennings

cybertrap

Speculative chronologically futuristic narratives that exist within the intersections of Black American Southern spaces, and the aesthetics and world-building affordances of Black cyberpunk (cyberfunk).
—John Jennings

Dieselfunk

An area of Afrofuturism that—like its counterpart, steamfunk—blends science fiction and fantasy with Afrocentricity, 20th-century racial tropes, and diesel/atomic age–based technology.
—Tim Fielder

ethno-gothic

The ethno-gothic deals primarily with speculative narratives that engage with negatively affective, racialized identity–situated psychological traumas via the traditions of Gothic tropes and technologies, such as the grotesque other, body horror, haunted spaces, the hungry ghost, the uncanny, the doppelgänger, fictional historical artifacts, and multivalent disruptive tensions between the constructions of memory, history, the present, and the self.
—John Jennings and Dr. Stanford Carpenter

Sankofanology

The connection of the past, present, and future to generate substantiality and intentionality. Sankofanology comes from the West African, Ghanaian word “Sankofa,” which describes how one can learn from the past, present, and future, or connect with it.
—Quentin VerCetty

Sankofatopia

Black nationalist world-building away from colonial influences with the sole purpose of creating free Black futures in order to know ourselves, define ourselves, and heal ourselves. This practice has an emphasis on looking at the fantastic as we “go back and get” our Black diasporic trauma, bring it into the future, and utilize African diasporic cultures, sciences, technologies, and belief systems to construct multidimensional, habitable, colonial-free Black utopian spaces.
—Stacey Robinson

steamfunk

A subgenre of Afrofuturism that blends science fiction and fantasy, the sensibilities of Victorian-era history, and industrial-age technology that culminates in narratives of race and ethnicity.
—Tim Fielder

Transfuturism

A framework that explores the aesthetic practice and social constructions of gender and race as a critical embodiment of imagination pushing back against systemic oppression and the notion of cisgender performances as normal, natural, and preferred.
—Amber Johnson

veilscape

The space between the physical and the spiritual realms that allows for our transition into the spiritual other. It is a space of infinite spiritual awareness where the highest truth of who we are is revealed. As we marry into the veilscape, we experience beyond the physical realm, allowing the intangible to be made tangible and the unseen to be seen.
—Delita Martin

Meet the Experts

Reynaldo Anderson is an associate professor of Africology and African American studies at Temple University; executive director and co-founder of the Black Speculative Arts Movement; and co-editor of the books Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness and The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design.

Dr. Stanford Carpenter serves as the chair of the board of advisors for the NorCalMLK Foundation’s Black & Brown Comix Arts Festival. His extensive research in comics and popular culture uses anthropology, archives, data mining, ethnographic methods, and interviews to reconstruct and track cultural phenomena, creative processes, events, distribution networks, and institutional practices. As an educator, he uses anthropology to give lectures and teach courses on artistic production, comics, media studies, pop culture, and visual arts.

Tim Fielder is an illustrator, concept designer, cartoonist, and animator born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and raised in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He has a lifelong love of visual Afrofuturism, pulp entertainment, and action films, and has worked in the storyboarding, film visual development, gaming, comics, and animation industries for clients as varied as Marvel Comics (Dr. Dre: Man With a Cold, Cold Heart), The Village Voice, TriStar Pictures (Mothership Connection), and Ubisoft Entertainment (Batman: Vengeance).

John Jennings is a professor, graphic novelist, curator, Harvard Fellow, New York Times bestselling author, Eisner Award winner, and all-around champion of Black culture. As professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California at Riverside, Jennings examines the visual culture of race in various media forms, including film, illustrated fiction, and comics and graphic novels. He is also the director of Abrams ComicArts’ imprint Megascope, which publishes graphic novels focused on the experiences of people of color. He is the co-founder and organizer of the Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem, the NorCalMLK Foundation’s Black & Brown Comix Arts Festival in San Francisco, and SOL-CON: The Brown and Black Comix Expo at the Ohio State University. 

Dr. Amber Johnson is an award-winning associate professor of communication and social justice at Saint Louis University. Johnson’s research and activism focus on narratives of identity, protest, and social justice in digital media, popular media, and everyday lived experiences. Their mixed-media artistry involves working with metals, recycled and reclaimed goods, photography, poetry, percussion, and paint to interrogate systems of oppression.

Charles E. Jones is a professor and head of the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Cincinnati. He has spent a career grooming the future of Africana studies—from building programs to doing original research to encouraging students in the classroom—and is co-editor of the book Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness.

Jessi Jumanji is a Memphis, Tennessee–raised visual artist with a passion for African culture, Black history, and nature. Exploring the style of Afrofuturism, her artwork pays homage to Black experiences of the past, present, and future.

Delita Martin is an artist based in Huffman, Texas. Formerly a member of the fine arts faculty at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Martin is currently working as a full-time artist in her studio, Black Box Press. Exhibited nationally and internationally, Martin’s work was most recently shown at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, and welcomed into the Library of Congress. She served as the 2020 keynote speaker for the Mid America Print Council.

Originally from Washington, DC, Sheeba Maya has been living and working as a freelance illustrator, fine artist, graphic designer, curator, and educator in Brooklyn since 2009. Her artwork is inspired by her spiritual journey, her love of nature and culture, ancient wisdom, and all things mystical. Her work has been featured in galleries across the country, including SOMArts, Rush Arts Gallery, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Society of Illustrators Museum.

Stacey Robinson, an Arthur A. Schomburg fellow, completed his Master of Fine Arts at the University at Buffalo. His art speculates futures where Black people are free from colonial influences. Robinson’s collected works reside at Modern Graphics (Berlin), Bucknell University, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Reverend Andrew Rollins’s philosophy of ministry is a combination of liberation theology and charismatic theology. He believes that a pastor should be involved in the community and take a stand on social justice issues. He is a nationally renowned writer and lecturer, and his works have been published in two widely distributed anthologies.

Atlanta-based artist Tokie Rome-Taylor explores themes of time, spirituality, visibility, and identity through the medium of photography. Portraiture, set design, and objects all are a part of her photographic practice. She uses digital photography as her foundational medium, while also exploring cyanotype and embroidery as a means to explore the layered, complex relationship between African Americans in the diaspora and the Western world. 

Quentin VerCetty is a multiple award–winning multidisciplinary storyteller, educator, and Afrofuturist. A self-described visual griot, “artpreneur,” educator, “artivist,” and “ever-growing interstellar tree,” he is one of the world’s leading Afrofuturist artists. VerCetty is the first-ever visual artist commissioned by Carnegie Hall to create a signature work of art to represent one of the Hall’s festivals. His AstroSankofa makes myriad references to the galaxy-jumping, time-bending, and mind-expanding Afrofuturist world that defines Carnegie Hall’s Afrofuturism festival.