Harmonia Rosales "Creation Story," 2021

Nearly five hundred years ago, Nicolaus Copernicus posited a theory that changed the universe. More accurately, his theories, followed by Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo, ignited a cosmic revolution that compelled the Western world to confront its limited understanding of humanity’s place among the stars. Fundamentally, what they observed changed the possibilities of what they could fathom. The thinking at the foundation of "UNBOUND" is no less ambitious; it looks to space to reconsider how fixed perceptions of blackness might expand along the final frontier.

Opening in October, The Museum of the African Diaspora, MoAD’s new exhibition offers a meditation on the mysterious. Bringing together multimedia works by intergenerational artists across the diaspora, “UNBOUND: Art, Blackness, and the Universe” ignites an artistic conversation to challenge common understandings of blackness. Key Jo Lee, Chief of Curatorial Affairs and Public Programs, curated this monumental exhibition to “Throw in sharp relief this idea that blackness isn't merely an identity. It isn't merely a color. It is a transcendent creative force in the universe.” The exhibition boasts an impressive roster of artists based in the Bay Area and beyond, who are pushing against the boundaries of how we might come to understand blackness in art.

“UNBOUND” coincides with MoAD’s 20th anniversary, representing another shift for the institution as it returns from an exhibition hiatus. We often celebrate solar returns, our anniversaries, as they are opportunities to reflect on the past and prepare for the future. At 20, MoAD aims to continue serving as the local vanguard for Black art in the Bay Area while further embracing the international scope of all the diaspora has to offer. Collaboration is key in that vision, which is why they’ve partnered with branding design studio, McCalman and Co. to help design elements of the exhibition. “UNBOUND"’s opening day on October 1 marks an important occasion for Lee as well, who sees this as her first opportunity to fully realize her curatorial vision since arriving in the Bay Area a few years ago. That vision will fill three floors of the museum in time for “Nexus,” the second iteration of the SF/Bay Area Black Art Week.

Key Jo Lee, Chief of Curatorial Affairs and Public Programs at MoAD. Photo by Tinashe Chidarikire; courtesy of MoAD

Lee’s extensive research for the show draws from art history as well as theoretical astrophysics. While the bases may seem far apart, it is the artwork that draws everything closer together. Michael Owunna’s photography transposes the cosmos over the Black figure, depicting them as the “star stuff” they already are. When juxtaposed so, the blackness of skin elides with the darkness of the universe. Meanwhile, Harmonia Rosales’s “Creation Story” (2021) gestures to the significance the heavens play in orienting cosmologies and origin stories. Centered upon the deities Yemayá and Obatalá from the Yoruba spiritual tradition, this neoclassical style oil painting elevates the orishas to the level of Abrahamic figures. These works, and the others in the exhibition, reframe blackness as a type of dark matter. Though we can’t see dark matter with our present technology, it is estimated that it makes up eighty-five percent of all matter in the universe. What we can see is a small percentage when compared to what actually is. The rest has to be imagined. Who would know better than Albert Einstein who is believed to have said, "I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." Tapping into the imagination demands that we, indeed, become unbound. In this way, we are invited to expand into the unknown to find ourselves floating somewhere within the constellation of black contemporary art.

Didier William's "Dark Shores," 2024. Acrylic, ink, oil, wood carving on panel 80 1/8” H x 52 1/8” W
Courtesy of the artist and Altman Siegel, San Francisco

MoAD’s 20th anniversary and the opening of “UNBOUND” are happening at an important time for arts, blackness, and this country. As M. NourbeSe Philip writes in her meditation “Black W/Holes: A history of brief time,” under the header defining “space-time” as “The four-dimensional space whose points are events … You cannot talk about space as it relates to Black people — to African people — without talking about movement or moving through space. And once you talk about moving through space as it relates to Africans, then you must confront the forces that prohibit or restrict that moving.” The particular moment of space-time in which we exist is characterized by both aggressive defunding of the public arts and a methodical eradication of anything that might be characterized as “diversity.” Just as we describe “UNBOUND” as the culmination of an intellectual project, it can, and must, also be read as a provocation to consider what a blackness unbound by political and bureaucratic antagonism might look like.

What would it look like to realize the full potential of blackness before or beyond limited race-based thinking, which sees anything black as a threat? While seemingly Afrofuturist in nature, this provocation must be considered in the here and now. Embracing the potential of blackness is to embrace the spontaneous, the uncertain, and the singularity. It is the je ne sais quoi that we strive to estimate through the fabulous, the speculative, and spiritual. All of this is present in this exhibition, which in its grandest form, might even initiate its own type of revolution.

Five hundred years from now, what will the revolutions of our day be? Perhaps a scientist will attune their instruments to provide accurate readings of dark matter. Equally possible is that an artist might create a work that inspires a shift in sensibility and changes how we perceive the universe forever. In its 20th trip around the sun, MoAD is doubling down on its commitment to Black people in the diaspora despite the forces that seek to restrict that movement. With this comprehensive exhibit, it proposes a radical theory of blackness expanding to the stars, inviting audiences to examine all that black art can hold. Come October, their theory isn’t just an idea. They aim to prove it.

→ "UNBOUND: Art, Blackness, and the Universe" opens Oct. 1st at MoAD
moadsf.org

Main Image: Mikael Owunna "The Resurrection of Eke-Nnechukwu," 2021 Dye sublimation print on aluminum ©Mikael Owunna