Black Artists Create New Universes in "Unbound"

"Unbound: Art, Blackness, & the Universe at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) is deeply attuned to the forces of the cosmos. Spanning all three floors of MoAD, the exhibition explores how African and African diasporic artists imagine, remember, and conjure ancestral and futuristic notions of the universe. The show opens with a pairing of early- to mid-20th-century wooden sculptures from West Africa: an elongated figure by a Dogon artist and an Oshe Sango ceremonial staff by a Yoruba artist."

""What happens if you begin your journey through the exhibition by imagining your own body as a map of the cosmos, and ritual objects as technologies that connect you to ancestors, deities, and the universe itself?" The Dogon figure's verticality situates the body as a cosmological axis between earth and sky, while the Oshe Sango staff's dual form depends on ritual touch and movement to activate Sango's thunderous forces of justice and order."

"Mikael Owunna's radiant photographs of people whose bodies are hand-painted with celestial patterns wrap the interior of the hallway and elevator, adding an immersive element to the show. In this way, passing through the building feels like an intergalactic threshold in which the figures in Owunna's photographs shimmer and hover against the dim corridor."

Unbound: Art, Blackness, & the Universe spans three floors at the Museum of the African Diaspora and centers cosmic themes across media. The exhibition pairs early- to mid-20th-century West African wooden sculptures—a Dogon elongated figure and a Yoruba Oshe Sango ceremonial staff—with contemporary works that reframe bodies and ritual as cosmic technologies. Wall prompts invite imagining the body as a map of the cosmos and ritual objects as connectors to ancestors and deities. Mikael Owunna's hand-painted celestial photographs create an immersive corridor experience. Harmonia Rosales's painting depicts a confrontation between the orishas Yemayá and Obatalá.

Read at Hyperallergic