Afro Modern 2010

Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic 

Tate Liverpool 29 January – 25 April 2010

Conceived by Tanya Barson, now Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, curated by Tanya Barson and Peter Gorschlüter, Head of Exhibitions and Displays at Tate Liverpool. Contributing writers, curators and artists: Petrine Archer, Robert Conduru, Huey Copeland, Thelma Golden and Glenn Ligon, Gordon Parks, Romare Bearden, Renée Cox, Candace Breitz, Keith Piper, Manthia Diawara and Édouard Glissant, Courtney J. Martin and Kobena Mercer.

What does it mean to situate the site of Afro Modernity outside the African continent? To consider the contemporality and modalities of Africanness in its Diasporas? These are questions raised by the 2010 British exhibition Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic. Opened in Tate Liverpool, the exhibition aimed to bring into conversation multiple sites of the Black Atlantic, built upon the foundations of Paul Gilory’s 1993 work The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Framed within the 20th century, the collection features more than 140 works by over 60 artists, including renown artists such as Romare Bearden and Gordon Parks as well as other more recent critically acclaimed figures such as Renée Cox and Keith Piper. The title of the exhibition refers to Cultural Studies circles of the 1990s and 2000s, referencing movements of Africans and journeys between Europe, the Caribbean South America and North America as well as across the African continent itself. The name also alludes to more contemporary networks formed across continents, with creative links and artistic alliances forged in efforts to articulate voices of African and Afro-modernity across the same bodies of water that transported so many Africans in the last 500 years.

Laudable reception of the exhibition seemed due in part to the seven-part chronological orientation of the collection, including works from quite early in the 20th century, as well as its rejection of a large, all-encompassing “Black Atlantic Theme" under which each artist would aim to situate her work. With selections of Black artists deemed “traditionally” African or Diasporic as well as of White artists denigrated due to an enchantment with primitivism, the show artfully positions unexpected voices of an “Afro Modernist” context in conversation with one another.

Notably visible are the works of Candace Breitz and Keith Piper, whose photographs of seemingly recognizable African historical realities are recontextualized with satiric overlays. Breitz’s photograph of a southern African woman seated gracefully nude strikes the viewer as jarring as her body is eerily plastered with a blinding white; this image as metacommentary calls attention to the sweeping anonymity of nude African women in National Geographic-esque photographs, while also drawing on historio-cultural rites wherein bodies are painted white to call forth energies of spiritual realms. Similarly, Piper seems to comment on historical revisions of African history in creating a work almost in likeness of a book cover entitled appropriately in Manifest Destiny form, “Go West Young Man.” Employing one of the most well recognized images from the TransAtlantic Slave Trade, “Stowage of the British Slave Ship ‘Brookes’ 1788,” Piper satirically inverts a narrative of African enslavement and victimization by invoking a rally to pioneers in the 18th and 19th centuries to explore (read: colonize and exploit) unknown Western frontiers of the United States.

Ghost Series #4

Candace Breitz 1994-96

Go West Young Man

Keith Piper 1987

The poignancy of older pieces is hardly overshadowed by more contemporary works however, as Romare Bearden’s “Blue Shade” collage of a “mammified” and nude Black woman stands tall amidst muddled cotton blossoms collection. Ample Black historical allegory is given due reverence with pieces such as Gordon Parks’ “The Emerging Man, Harlem.” The image marks a turning point in Black 20th century literature, with a new take on and reference to James Baldwin’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

Blue Shade

Romare Bearden 1972

Emerging Man, Harlem

Gordon Parks 1952

The collection then, boasts altered media installation works (Breitz and Piper, for instance) as well as more traditional photography and collage of the 20^th century (Parks, Cox and Bearden). While certain components of the exhibition were deemed less innovative by most critics such as Jonathan Jones (particularly the 1960s collection)[1], the collection overall raises poignant questions about redefining Blackness, Africanness and modernity within contemporary artistic endeavors, staging a space for artists interested in dialogue of what it means to assert a title of “(Afro)Modern”, and aiming to link creative movements across waters.

River Queen, from Queen Nanny of the Maroons

Renée Cox 2004

-Kyrah M. Daniels

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[1] Jonathan Jones. “Afro Modern at Tate Liverpool: Voyage of rediscovery.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jan/29/afro-modern-tate-liverpool