Moi le Noir (2006–2008):
“Trans-substantiation 2.0: a white woman forks herself into a black man”

moRgan B. K. completely transforms her own body into the body of a black man. The transformation is carried out on two levels: analogue (covering the body with brown theatrical make-up) and digital (manual modelling of the body and all modifications in Photoshop). This is neither drag, costume nor appropriation; it is an act of trans-substantiation 2.0. In the digital medium the artist forks her own identity source code (as one forks a repository) and creates a new, fully legitimate version: black, male, autonomous.

The red background with poinsettia leaves functions as a womb-screen: it symbolises the birth of a new posthuman subject – digitally engendered, trans-racial and trans-gender. The title refers to Jean Rouch’s 1958 film Moi, un Noir, reversing the colonial vector: it is no longer black people adopting white names, but a white woman adopting black skin and male gender.

In an era when the Other is no longer only the immigrant but also AI, the cyborg and the prosthesis, the only authentic form of solidarity is the readiness to become the Other completely. Moi le Noir performs this gesture – already in 2006.

Technical data and context

Large-format colour photograph (125 × 170 cm), laser-exposed, under acrylic glass on dibond. The image is a composite of several layers combining analogue photographs (the artist’s body covered with brown theatrical make-up) with intensive, manual post-production in Photoshop. Created between 2006 and 2008 – a time when tools for morphing faces and bodies were still primitive compared to today’s GANs – the entire transformation was executed by hand, pixel by pixel.

Title and intertextual key

The title directly references Jean Rouch’s ethnographic film Moi, un Noir (1958), which portrays young Africans in Treichville who, at weekends, called themselves Edward G. Robinson, Lemmy Caution, or Tarzan. Rouch showed how colonial cinema became the only space in which they could “be someone”. moRgan reverses the vector: it is no longer the excluded subject entering the skin of the privileged, but the privileged subject (a white woman from Central-Eastern Europe) entering the skin of the historically excluded (a black man).

Trans-substantiation 2.0 – the core concept

The work is one of the earliest conscious realisations of digital trans-substantiation in Polish art – not metaphorical, but literal. The artist does not “pretend” to be a black man, does not put on a mask. In the layers of the digital image her substance (body, gender, race) is truly changed. In Catholic theology trans-substantiation means a change of substance while the accidents remain; here the substance of identity is changed while the continuity of the authorial “I” is preserved. Hence the term “2.0” – an update of the medieval miracle to the conditions of the digital medium.

Forking identity

The use of the term “fork” (from Git/GitHub) is precise: the artist treats her own body as a source repository and creates a public, parallel fork – a black, male version. In open-source culture a fork is not theft or counterfeit; it is a legitimate, creative branching. Thus moRgan avoids the classic accusation of cultural appropriation: the new subject is not “fake”; it is an autonomous, equal branch of the same identity tree.

Composition and visual symbolism

• Frontal, iconic pose (arms crossed, gaze straight into the lens) – a classic portrait of a ruler or Byzantine icon, yet at its centre stands a body that has just stepped beyond its own limits.
• Intense red background with poinsettia leaves functions as a womb-screen: symbolising the birth of a new posthuman subject. Poinsettia – associated with blood, toxicity and cultural foreignness – emphasises that the crossing of borders is never innocent.
• Absence of jewellery (except a thin chain) and props – pure presence of the new body being itself.

Cyberfeminist and early transhumanist context

In 2006–2008 the notions of “postgender” and “trans-racial” were virtually absent from art discourse. The work can be read as a continuation of Sadie Plant’s and Donna Haraway’s cyberfeminism (woman as weaver of networks, hacker of her own body) and as an anticipation of Rosi Braidotti’s fluid ontology. moRgan literally performs posthumanism: the body is reduced to a data carrier, skin to an interface, identity to a temporary cluster of reconfigurable parameters.

Political dimension of the gesture

In the Polish context of the 2000s, when discourse on race and gender was almost non-existent in art, Moi le Noir is a radical and solitary gesture. The artist does not ask permission to cross boundaries – she crosses them unilaterally, without the right of return. At the same time she avoids the trap of “white saviourism”: she does not speak on behalf of black men, but declares “I am him” – thereby making the classic critique of appropriation impossible.

Historical significance

The work was created more than a decade before the widespread use of deepfakes, racial filters and the debate on “digital blackface”. In 2006 it was an act of pure ontological speculation. Today, in the age of neural avatars and fluid identities in the metaverse, it proves prophetic.

Moi le Noir does not illustrate posthumanism or cyberfeminism. It performs them – by hand, pixel by pixel – at a time when almost no one yet knew that such performance was possible.