I AM ALFONSO JONES illustrator STACEY ROBINSON

 Stacey Robinson is a visual artist, and an Assistant Professor of graphic design at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign.  Since the early 1990’s his work has combined comics book and science fiction aesthetics with Afrocentricity to imagine Black spiritualism and education as a means of transcending colonialism. He completed his Master's of Fine Art at the University at Buffalo, where his thesis Binary ConScience explored Black speculative futures through our cultural wealth, trauma, and imagination. At Harvard University Stacey was a 2019-2020 Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African-American Research. His research looked at Hip-Hop’s multimodal performance practice of inspiration and activism, as self-created reparations and it potential as a means for commodified wealth and Black liberation. As a member of the Black Speculative arts Movement (BSAM), Stacey had traveled internationally, having difficult conversations surrounding ideas of Black nationalism. In continuation his multimedia work discusses ideas of “Black Utopias” as decolonized spaces of peace by considering Black affluent, self-sustaining communities, Black protest movements, and the art movements that document them. As one half of the collaborative team “Black Kirby” with artist John Jennings, he creates graphic novels, gallery exhibitions and lectures that deconstruct the work of comic book creator Jack Kirby to re-imagine resistance spaces inspired by Black diasporic cultures. His latest graphic novel, ‘I Am Alfonso Jones’ with writer Tony Medina is available from Lee & Low books.