Afro-futurism: Re-imagining the Black Experience

Introduction:

In this exhibit, we will be examining three pieces of black art i.e. Janelle Monáe’s “Screwed” from Dirty Computer [Emotion Picture], Lorna Simpson’s #26 photography from her Earth and Sky collection, and Tracy K. Smith’s SCI-FI from her poem book: Life on Mars. The Oxford Bibliographies define Afro-futurism as a flourishing contemporary movement of African American, African, and Black diasporic writers, artists, musicians, and theorists that comprises cultural production and scholarly thought—literature, visual art, photography, film, multimedia art, performance art, music, and theory—that imagine greater justice and a freer expression of black subjectivity in the future or in alternative places, times, or realities. These pieces will transport you to a dimension of blackness that can only be reached through the mind.

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