P. Andrews-Keenan

It’s a toss-up on what you notice first upon entering The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined, the magnificent Murano glass chandelier illuminating  the galley or the black walls. But then, the art! The art catches your eye, and everything, even the room shifts.   

M. Scott Johnson’s sculptures of  Black folk hero High John de Conqueror (2009) set upon black plinths, grounds the space with the permanence of his materials; Tawny Chatmon’s gold-leafed portraits and frames literally added to the glow of the space, giving us a 21st century reimagining of renaissance art;  You are compelled by the vibrancy of Arvie Smith’s Preach It (2021), inspired by ancient mythology, yet telling a uniquely modern Black story;  Felandus Thames delivers a message that could have come from the future – “More than life interested me so that I dare to knock at the door of the cosmos,” and burnt into hairbrushes no less; The gaze of the subject in Delita Martin’s work, Visionary (2021) was rendered in shades of blue I’m certain can only be seen from outside the atmosphere.   In my head I heard, ‘he’s got the whole world in his hands’; In contrast, Larry Cook’s photograph ‘On the Other Side of Landscape Series #9 (2021), proffered a barren but hopeful landscape, a prison yard freed of prisoners;   Baltimore native Monica Ikegwushowcased her mastery of color in the piece We Outside (2021) while allowing us to glimpse the inner lives of Black millennials.   Morel Doucet’s work After All that, We Still Stand (Where Black Lives, Look Blue #3) (2022) injected that despite adversity, hope springs eternal.  

Right - Work by Felandus Thames.