Description

The Soviet image of the African American, in posters, media and art, from the unique collection of the actor Wayland Rudd

Wayland Rudd (1900-52) was an African American actor who moved to the Soviet Union in 1932 and lived there until his death in 1952. He appeared in numerous Soviet films and theatrical performances, and served as a model for paintings, drawings and propaganda posters. Using Rudd's personal story as a springboard, The Wayland Rudd Collection combines over 200 Soviet images (paintings, movie stills, posters, graphics, etc.) of Africans and African Americans produced between 1920 and 1980 with responses from contemporary artists, writers and scholars. Bringing together American, postcolonial, and post-Soviet perspectives on race and Communism, the book maps the complicated and often contradictory intersection of race and Communism in the Soviet context, exposing the interweaving of internationalism, solidarity, humanism and Communist ideals with practices of othering, exoticization and racist stereotyping.