“Here_ Pride and Belonging in African Art,” National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution – Photo: Brad Simpson
Tucked beneath the National Mall, inside the subterranean galleries of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, an enchanting world of queer discovery awaits — at least until August 23.
You have until then to experience Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art, a collection of nearly 60 artworks exploring “how LGBTQ+ artists from Africa and its diaspora are part of a larger, joyful story of African art history.”
Co-curated by the museum’s Kevin D. Dumouchelle and independent writer and curator Serubiri Moses, the exhibition opened relatively quietly this past January. A fascinating survey comprising painting, photography, sculpture, collage, installation, and video and digital art, Here marks history for the museum, founded in 1964, as its first such exhibition dedicated to LGBTQ African artists.
“Actually, this is really one of the first major exhibitions, certainly on this scale, to approach the subject at all,” says Dumouchelle. “There are two very small, important pioneering shows on the subject that happened on the African continent in Lagos, Nigeria and Dakar, Senegal about a decade or decade and a half ago. But other than that, it’s really not been addressed as a subject.”
Even at this museum, Dumouchelle points out, “one of the artists who we have in our collection, who we have shown once previously — Jim Chuchu, in a single work exhibition in 2017 — almost bizarrely, we didn’t actually speak about the fact that his work Invocation: Severance of Ties is fundamentally connected to his coming out and his being rejected by his parents.”
Chuchu’s Invocation video series is presented in Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art in its full context, along with myriad other works bringing vital visibility to queer lives and stories, and artistic expression.
From the in-your-face fabulousness of Athi-Patra Ruga’s arresting portrait Versatile Queen: A Transhuman Proposal, to the desire expressed in Rachid Boukharta’s Garden of Delights, or the sublime simplicity of Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki’s animated short 2 Lizards, the exhibition offers a dazzling spectrum of queer identity through works representing more than 20 different African nations.
“These stories have always been a part of African art history, even if that history remains underwritten,” Dumouchelle said in an earlier press statement. “Here uncovers that history.”
Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art is on display through Aug. 23 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, 950 Independence Ave. SW. Free Admission. Visit africa.si.edu.
Dear Black Child – Tobi OnaboluEternal Light – Sola Olulode“Here_ Pride and Belonging in African Art,” National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution – Photo: Brad SimpsonAMA #WCW – Dada Khanyisa
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