Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica

Pan-Africanism, first named and theorized around 1900, is commonly regarded as an umbrella term for political movements that have advanced the call for both individual self-determination and global solidarity among peoples of African descent. It has yet to be fully examined as a worldview that takes its force from art and culture.

As the first major exhibition to survey Pan-Africanism’s cultural manifestations, Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica gathers together some 350 objects, spanning the 1920s to the present, made by artists on four continents: Africa, North and South America, and Europe. Panafrica, the promised land named in the exhibition title, is presented as a conceptual place where arguments about decolonization, solidarity, and freedom are advanced and negotiated with the aim of an emancipatory future. Rather than a stable and defined territory, the exhibition maps Panafrica as a shifting and boundless constellation that transforms and reassembles standard representation of the planet.

In fact, many artists featured in the exhibition have creatively redrawn the map of Africa or the world: Yto Barrada (Paris, born 1971, lives in Tangier), Kerry James Marshall (Birmingham, born 1955, lives in Chicago), and Abdoulaye Ndoye (Dakar, born 1951, lives in Dakar. Others, including David Hammons (Springfield, IL, born 1943, lives in New York), Edith de Kyndt (Ypres, born 1960, lives in Berlin and Brussels), Chris Ofili (Manchester, born 1968, lives in Port of Spain and London), and Kawira Mwirichia (Nairobi, 1984–2020), have made flags which correspond to no official nation but rather imagine a transnational solidarity.

The center of the exhibition, meanwhile, turns around an extensive display of books, magazines, record albums, and ephemera which have helped circulate ideas of resistance and self-invention worldwide since the early 20th century. Together this expansive presentation—artworks from across the globe in nearly every media—prompts questions and invites visitors to grapple with and participate in Pan-Africanism’s calls for equality and social transformation.

Framing the individual artworks in the exhibition are the ideas of three influential 20th-century cultural and political movements—Garveyism, Négritude, and Quilombismo—that offer competing visions of a Black Planet, all of them premised on a great contrast with the world we all inhabit today. Further exhibition spaces in Project a Black Planet spotlight debates around Blackness, inner life, political and psychological agitation, and the role of ancestors and spirituality.

Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica is co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona in collaboration with KANAL-Centre Pompidou Bruxelles.

The exhibition is curated by Antawan I. Byrd, associate curator of Photography and Media, Art Institute of Chicago, and assistant professor of Art History, Northwestern University; Elvira Dyangani Ose, director, Museu d’art contemporani de Barcelona; Adom Getachew, Professor of Political Science and Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity, University of Chicago; and Matthew S. Witkovsky, vice president for strategic art initiatives and Sandor Chair of Photography and Media, Art Institute of Chicago.

Focusing on Pan-Africanism’s cultural expression, this book presents a rich selection of the visual, sonic, and other creative forms that have emerged throughout the movement’s evolution. Essays from more than a dozen scholars, artists, and practitioners speak to a range of themes and places, reflecting Pan-Africanism’s ideals of diversity and dialogue as well as its aspirations to egalitarianism. Learn more.

Table of Contents

Exhibition Audio Transcripts

In this Harlem speech, Marcus Garvey invoked the history of slavery and its racist legacies to ground his vision of emancipation and equality. He insisted on the large scale of the global Black community—400 million people according to his count. The ideal of constructing a parallel Black world is suggested in his recommendation that his audience counter images of a white God with those of a Black God. Loud audience applause captures the broad appeal of Garveyite ideas.

“… and protect the integrity of the Black millions and suffer! I decided to do the latter.

There is no future for a people who deny their past. My foreparents, my grandparents, my mother, my father, did not suffer and die to give me an education to slight, oppress, or discourage my people.

[applause]

Because whatsoever education I acquired out of their sacrifice of over 300 years, I shall use for the salvation of the 400 million Black people of the world. And the DAY when I forsake my people, may God almighty say there shall be no more life for you!

I unequivocally rejected the racist assumption of much white American Christianity. Namely, that God had created the Black man inferior, and that he’d intended Negroes to be a servant class, heavers of wood and drawers of water. Well, I predicated my view of man on the Doctrine of Imago Dei, “All men, regardless of color, are created in the image of God”.

Now, from this premise comes the equality of all men and brotherhood of all men. The Biblical injunction of Acts 17:26 reminds us that he created, of one blood, all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and is most interested in brotherhood within his own race. Because if Negroes are created in God’s image, and Negroes are Black, then God must, in some sense, be Black!”

[applause]

In this 1984 recording, the writer Audre Lorde performs her 1978 poem, “A Litany for Survival,” which examines ways in which marginalized and oppressed people often live in constant fear for their own well-being. Lorde’s oratory is characterized by a rhythmic delivery that establishes momentum between stanzas. Her techniques of breath control and projection convey confidence and authority to her listeners. This oratorical approach amplifies the poem’s central message: while insecurity, rejection, and violence may shape one’s existence, having the courage to speak up may ultimately ensure one’s survival.

A Litany for Survival

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.

Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica

Exhibition Audio Transcripts

Sponsors

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

Archives

Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica

Exhibition Audio Transcripts

Marcus Garvey Harlem Speech

Audre Lorde Reading “A Litany for Survival” at Amerika Haus

Sponsors

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories