Pan-Africanism, first named and theorised 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 people of African descent. As the first major exhibition to survey Pan-Africanism’s cultural manifestations, ‘Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica’ gathers 350 objects, spanning the 1920s to the present, made by artists on four continents: Africa, North and South America as well as Europe. Panafrica, the promised land named in the exhibition title, is presented as a conceptual place where arguments about decolonisation, 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.
Many artists featured in the exhibition have creatively redrawn the map of Africa or the world. These artists include : Yto Barrada (Paris, France born 1971, lives in Tangier, Morocco) and Abdoulaye Ndoye (Dakar, Senegal born 1951, lives in Dakar). Others include Kawira Mwirichia (Nairobi, 1984–2020) whose flag corresponds to no official nation but rather imagines a transnational solidarity. More participating artists include Samuel Fosso (b. 1962), a Cameroonian-born Nigerian photographer who has worked for most of his career in the Central African Republic; Zanele Muholi (b. 1972), a South African artist and visual activist working in photography, video and installation; Abdias do Nascimento (1914-2011), a prominent African Brazilian scholar, artist and politician; Awol Erizku (b. 1988), Ethiopian-born American contemporary artist working in painting, photography, sculpture and film; as well as Wangechi Mutu (b. 972), a Kenyan American visual artist, known primarily for her painting, sculpture and film.
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 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 namely Garveyism, Négritude and Quilombismo, each of which 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-organised 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. ‘Project a Black Planet’ will run until the 30th of March 2025 at the Art Institute of Chicago.
