A mirrored map showing North America attached to Africa instead of South America welcomes visitors to the National Gallery of Art\u2019s (NGA) newest exhibition, \u201cAfro-Atlantic Histories.\u201d Created by Hank Willis Thomas, the 2020 artwork\u2014titled A Place to Call Home (African American Reflection)\u2014testifies to the \u201cfeelings of connection and detachment that many African Americans have toward Africa,\u201d notes the NGA in a statement. Looking at oneself in the artwork\u2019s reflective surface allows viewers to stake their position in the historical and contemporary racial narratives of the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201c[A] mythical connection to Africa is embedded in your identity, but many people go to Africa looking for home and don\u2019t find it because our roots are so diluted there,\u201d says Thomas in the statement. \u201cThey also never felt at home in the U.S., where they were born. I wanted to make a place where African Americans come from.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas\u2019 map is one of more than 130 artworks and documents featured in the Washington, D.C. exhibition, which explores the impact of the African diaspora in Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe between the 17th and 21st centuries. Broadly defined as the mass dispersion of peoples from Africa, often through forced migration under the transatlantic slave trade, the diaspora has a rich cultural legacy, with diasporic art expressing Blackness in disparate places across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n
First exhibited at the Museu de Arte de S\u00e3o Paulo (MASP) in Brazil in 2018, \u201cHistorias Afro-Atlanticas,\u201d as the show was called then, explored the Portuguese word hist\u00f3rias, which \u201ccan encompass both fictional and non-fictional narratives of cultural, economic, personal or political character,\u201d according to 2021 NGA statement. \u201cThe term is plural, diverse and inclusive, presenting viewpoints that have been marginalized or forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like its original iteration, \u201cAfro-Atlantic Histories\u201d argues that multiple histories are at play at any given time\u2014a view that has become increasingly mainstream in recent decades. Though every society has a widely accepted history, alternative narratives omitted from the history books also exist. Some survive through oral traditions, while others are siloed in the communities that experienced them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe [have started to] understand history differently in the past 40 or 50 years,\u201d says Molly Donovan, curator of contemporary art at the NGA. \u201cWe\u2019re working in different ways to tell histories. It enables us to tell better stories.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. showcases 130 works by artists from 24 countries<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12963,"featured_media":5686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,16,15],"tags":[7,26,25],"class_list":{"0":"post-5689","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured","8":"category-news","9":"category-politics","10":"tag-apie-project","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-politics"},"yoast_head":"\n