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The Observer
Black Mirror star Aldis Hodge paints a portrait of divided America

The actor has collaborated with artist Harmonia Rosales to create a series of
images of the ‘terrifying’ reality of racism in the US

Lucy Rock

Sun 21 Jan 2018 00.01 GMT


Last modified on Sun 21 Jan 2018 00.12 GMT

Actor Aldis Hodge

The Black Mirror actor Aldis Hodge has devoted his Hollywood career – which
includes roles in Hidden Figures and Straight Outta Compton – to positive
portrayals of African Americans. Now he is using the art world to promote social
justice with a series of provocative paintings.

The first two, produced in collaboration with acclaimed artist Harmonia Rosales,
were shown at the LA Art Show last week. Rosales’s reimagination of Michelangelo’s
Creation of Adam – depicting God and the first man as black women – went viral last
year when she posted it on Instagram.

Hodge and Rosales want to start a debate around how racial stereotypes are created
and why they persist. One image shows a child soldier clutching an AK-47 and a copy
of Gray’s Anatomy to illustrate how these boys are seen as a lost cause. The other
depicts a woman in a niqab cradling a baby wrapped in an American flag.
Hodge, who plays a man trying out an experimental mind-moving invention on his wife
in the Black Museum episode of Black Mirror, said: “We’ve seen a lot of hysterics
around Islamophobia, around judgment towards the LGBTQ community, women and black
people, and it seems to be promoted and celebrated in a very terrifying way as of
late.”
One of the paintings shows a child soldier holding an AK-47 and a copy of Gray’s
Anatomy
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One of the paintings shows a child soldier holding an AK-47 and a copy of Gray’s
Anatomy Photograph: Aldis Hodge and Harmonia Rosales

Rosales, whose fans include the actor Samuel L Jackson, said: “A lot of people are
afraid to ask, ‘Why is it that way?’ We want people to be comfortable with being
uncomfortable.”

Hodge, 31, who studied art and design at college and is a skilled horologist as
well as a painter, said: “Most of these people get their information not from
personal experience; they judge somebody based on what they’ve seen on the news or
what fearful story they’ve heard.

“Often you’ll find somebody who says, ‘I used to think this way and I met someone
who changed my perception.’ I’ve been working in the [US] south for five or six
years and I’ll get, ‘You know what, you’re not like the regular blacks, you’re a
different kind of black.’ No, I’m not. I’m black!”

Hodge has experienced racism all his life, as a child in New Jersey and in the
acting world. “In Hollywood you still have the moniker of this is a black film,
this is a black this, a black that,” he said. “We have worked so long in this
country not to be acknowledged by our colour but by who we are as human beings, yet
people are still acknowledging us through colour.”
Another image shows a woman in a niqab cradling a baby wrapped in the American
flag.
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Another image shows a woman in a niqab cradling a baby wrapped in the American
flag. Photograph: Aldis Hodge and Harmonia Rosales

Despite Hollywood’s increasing awareness of diversity issues, a University of


Southern California study published last summer of 900 popular films from 2007 to
2016 showed that almost nothing had changed in terms of representation on screen
around gender, race, LGBTQ status and disability. The pool of directors proved even
less diverse.

Hodge said people should think about inclusion rather than diversity, which “has
been turned into a diminutive tool that is regressive”.

“They say, ‘We need some diversity – throw a black guy in there, or a Latin girl.’
They still don’t look at these people as normal. They don’t understand the normalcy
of walking around America and seeing all folk integrating naturally.”

He thinks Hollywood is slowly starting to change as a broader range of people rise


up the ranks. Last year actors Viola Davis and Julius Tennon – who run a multimedia
company, JuVee Productions – spoke to the Guardian about “pipeline issues at the
top with people of colour”.
Hodge and his brother Edwin began acting as toddlers, appearing in commercials,
Sesame Street and the musical Show Boat on Broadway. Most of his childhood was
spent in Clifton, New Jersey, where the family was subjected to racism. “There was
the KKK running around and snatching people up. My mom had to run and escape from
them one night,” Hodge said.

Rosales, 33, grew up in Chicago and has described herself as Afro-Cuban. “My family
comes in all different kinds of shades. I had racism all around. I was not white,
yet I wasn’t black enough. I wasn’t Latina enough because I didn’t speak fluent
Spanish. I didn’t fit in anywhere.”

Both Hodge and Rosales, who began painting together last year and have recently
started dating, feel that the election of Donald Trump exposed the reality of
racism. Rosales said: “They have someone now as a poster child for their racism,
regardless of Trump’s individual beliefs.”

Hodge, who plays Noah in the slavery drama Underground, which has just launched on
Netflix UK, said: “When people ask if it’s gotten worse, they ask from the
perspective of not having understood the reality. Harmonia is an African woman; I’m
a black man. This is not different for us.

“I was raised with being taught how to speak to cops so I don’t lose my life at a
young age. We’ve always dealt with police brutality. I don’t walk around without
being aware of my surroundings. It is the people who have not been affected or
targeted who are starting to say: ‘Wow, is this what really goes on in this
country?’ ”
Topics

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The Observer

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