I completed this painting recently and it has become a constant point of reflection throughout this year, during which we have committed ourselves to an intensive study of W.E.B Du Bois’s thought and practice in Philadelphia. In his 1928 novel Dark Princess, the eponymous heroine, Kautilya reminds an audience of leaders hailing from the dark nations that “as our Black and curly-haired Lord Buddha testifies in a hundred places…our point is that Pan Africa belongs logically with Pan Asia.” Du Bois explores this historical claim further in The World and Africa(1946), which he would publish eighteen years after Dark Princess.
