Abstract
As a female creative with roots in Yoruba and American culture, understanding my cultural heritage has been both informed and hindered by the archives preserved within museums and cultural institutions. Recently, several scholars have stated that the archives preserved within such organizations are never “neutral” but instead preserve colonial systems by elevating Western cultures and devaluing others. Too often then, objects from ‘devalued’ cultures are left in stagnant exhibitions without contextual ties to the cultures from which they came and how those cultures have evolved with time; a missed opportunity at best and gross negligence at worst that reinforces old stereotypes and primitivism. How can archival objects be put in dialogue with contemporary artists who are bridging the gaps to the past in their work? Could giving these objects a contextual voice increase interest and community engagement? In this paper, the role of the visual arts in critiquing and recontextualizing Black/African cultural arts is examined through a racial iconography and decolonial lens, specifically the Remembering and Reframing Indigenous Projects as defined by Linda Tuhiwai-Smith. This research was then put in practice as the ‘Blue is Our Color’ exhibit at the Hedreen Gallery in 2022, which showcased indigo textiles from West Africa in dialogue with cyanotype photographs, fabric collages and vibrant abstractions from the Pacific Northwest. As a visual thread, blue was used to represent a version of Blackness and African-ness that holds much more than stagnant history and simplistic ideas of identity.
Presenters
Adetola AbatanProject Manager, Art in Public Places, Washington State Arts Commission, Washington, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2023 Special Focus—Museum Transformations: Pathways to Community Engagement
KEYWORDS
Art, African Art, Black Art, Blue, Reframing, Archive, Decolonization, Collections
