Afro Modern: Journeys Through the Black Atlantic Tate Liverpool, 29th January-25th April, Tel: 0151 702 7400
In 1993, Paul Gilroy, now professor of social theory at LSE, wrote the groundbreaking book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. He identified a network of black cultures surrounding and crisscrossing the ocean, connecting Africa to North and South America, the Caribbean and Europe, all contributing to the powerful, hybrid, syncretic culture of the African diaspora. Gilroy argued that the contribution of this culture to 20th-century modernism and contemporary art has been consistently diminished. “Afro Modern” seeks to redress the balance.
Appropriately for this port city once embroiled in the business of slavery, the exhibition will trace the trade routes of the imagination to and fro across the sea. It will show how the different black cultures fringing the Atlantic inspired Picasso and Brancusi but also gave birth to avant-garde movements such as the Harlem Renaissance. In turn, it will explore how contemporary artists as various as Ellen Gallagher, Chris Ofili, Isaac Julien and Kara Walker, have taken the language of modernism and used it to formulate and assert their own identities. The show is part of a citywide celebration, “Liverpool and the Black Atlantic,” but its scope is more far reaching, excavating an undervalued lineage in contemporary art.
Emma Crichton-Miller is an arts writer
This article first appeared in the February 2010 edition of Prospect
In 1993, Paul Gilroy, now professor of social theory at LSE, wrote the groundbreaking book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. He identified a network of black cultures surrounding and crisscrossing the ocean, connecting Africa to North and South America, the Caribbean and Europe, all contributing to the powerful, hybrid, syncretic culture of the African diaspora. Gilroy argued that the contribution of this culture to 20th-century modernism and contemporary art has been consistently diminished. “Afro Modern” seeks to redress the balance.
Appropriately for this port city once embroiled in the business of slavery, the exhibition will trace the trade routes of the imagination to and fro across the sea. It will show how the different black cultures fringing the Atlantic inspired Picasso and Brancusi but also gave birth to avant-garde movements such as the Harlem Renaissance. In turn, it will explore how contemporary artists as various as Ellen Gallagher, Chris Ofili, Isaac Julien and Kara Walker, have taken the language of modernism and used it to formulate and assert their own identities. The show is part of a citywide celebration, “Liverpool and the Black Atlantic,” but its scope is more far reaching, excavating an undervalued lineage in contemporary art.
Emma Crichton-Miller is an arts writer
This article first appeared in the February 2010 edition of Prospect
