'Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic'
Unknown Artist at Tate Liverpool'Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic' explores the impact of different black cultures from around the Atlantic on art from the early twentieth-century to today. The exhibition takes its inspiration from Paul Gilroy's influential book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993). It features over 140 works by more than 60 artists, including South Africans Candice Breitz and Tracey Rose. Gilroy used the term 'The Black Atlantic' to describe the transmission of black cultures around the Atlantic, and the instances of cultural hybridity, that occurred as a result of transatlantic slavery and its legacy. 'Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic' reflects Gilroy's idea of the Atlantic Ocean as a 'continent in negative', offering a network connecting Africa, North and South America, the Caribbean and Europe. It traces both real and imagined routes taken across the Atlantic, and highlights artistic links and dialogues from the early twentieth-century to today.
An international symposium entitled 'Global Exhibitions: Contemporary Art and the African Diaspora', scheduled alongside the exhibition, brings together artists, art historians, cultural critics and curators to reflect on recent developments in the globalisation of the contemporary art of Africa and its many diasporas. It aims to discuss and unravel the complexities of presenting and exploring art of the African diaspora, and situating it within debates around Modernism.
29 January - 25 April
