The Mark Of Man

In collaboration with artists Elisha Tawe and Mohamed Mussa, Boy.Brother.Friend premieres their new two-part film work on the Boy.Brother.Friend digital platform over the next 30 days.

The collaboration marks the latest work by the creative duo, GRAY417C, spawned from casual exchanges around masculinity over video calls, voice notes and in-person meetings at a distance during the covid-19 pandemic. As conversations progressed, the artists each selected their poems responding to masculinities in separate veins.

Drawing on the prolific work of French-Martiniquan psychologist Franz Fanon and philosopher and vanguard African-American feminist scholar Moyo Bailey, Elisha Tawe and Mohamed Mussa’s collaborative work The Mark of Man explores wanton boys, wandering, and the unending search for solitude.

In conversations with themselves, two young men reckon with the art of self-love, journeying to and from soliloquies of sadness. Part One recounts expectations and relationships gone wrong, whereas Part Two plays with prose in the English language and Kiswahili - the national dialect of Tanzania, where both artists were raised. Telling stories of delusion and the wretchedness of loss, notions of drowning and asylum are unhinged. Many men traverse borders for salvation or acceptance. In the filmmakers’ mission, the camera lens promotes mental health and self-affirmation. Masculinity is celebrated and positioned as essential internal work.