The Art Institute of Chicago’s “Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica” is massive, featuring 350 works of art, with paintings, sculpture, video and audio, as well as historical objects and ephemera spanning a century. As you travel room to room, the seldom-heard voice of Marcus Garvey and soothing contemplations of Audre Lorde wash over you.
Co-curator Antawan Byrd, associate curator of photography and media at the museum and an art history professor at Northwestern University, said this exhibition — which runs through March 30 and will travel to Barcelona, Brussels and London after its debut here — is likely the first of its kind.
“The museum has a very strong track record of mounting exhibitions that feature Black artists,” said Byrd. “For example, there was a fantastic show that I helped organize on the Medu Art Ensemble, which is an anti-apartheid South African artist collective, a few years ago. But on this scale, to my knowledge, it’s pretty unprecedented.”
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Q. So, let’s start at the very beginning with a definition. What is your definition of Pan-Africanism?
A. For me, Pan-Africanism is a philosophy. It’s an ideology. It’s a worldview that is about solidarity among Black people worldwide. It’s an idea that essentially claims that the fates of Black people globally are intertwined, and that through cooperation, through forms of solidarity, a better, more equitable future becomes possible.
Q. How does this exhibition realize that definition?
A. It’s less about wanting to realize that definition than it is about showing how artists and ordinary people throughout the long 20th century have been influenced by that idea. So, how have they been influenced by the idea of solidarity on a global, worldwide scale? And so, the exhibition tries to introduce the audience to different ways that Pan-Africanist ideas have inspired the work of artists.
Q. The Art Institute is co-presenting this exhibition with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona and KANAL-Centre Pompidou in Brussels. Why do this right now?
A. As a curator and art historian, I’m always interested in analyzing the history of exhibition-making. Pan-Africanism as an idea was always latent in a lot of other exhibitions, and sometimes it took different terms. So, Black Transnationalism or Afro-Modernity or Afropolitanism, but there had never been a robust analysis of Pan-Africanism and its influence on art and culture. So, we felt that because we’ve had all of these precedent exhibitions, now is the time to actually try to realize this project.
Q. Is there one piece in this exhibit that you believe captures the essence of the Pan-African art movement?
A. One that resonates with me a great deal is a self-portrait by the African American artist Buford Delaney. It’s called “Self-Portrait in a Paris Bath House,” and it was made in 1970, and it was one of the last self-portraits that Buford Delaney ever produced.
For many people, they’re familiar with Delaney’s portraits of other people: James Baldwin or Marian Anderson, for example, or the work that he did in abstraction. But this self-portrait is powerful because throughout his life, he always wanted to travel to Africa, and he was never able to act on that desire. And so, he depicts himself at the center of a kind of African imaginary. He’s sitting on a wooden stool that makes references to West African Ashanti royal culture. He has adorned himself with beads and other accessories that allude to East African Maasai culture. And then, surrounding him in this painting, are these references to Egyptian hieroglyphs.
… He’s projecting himself at the center of an African worldview. To me, that speaks to the title of the show, but also, it speaks to how very little details, very sort of powerful details that we sometimes overlook, can have a huge influence on the way that the artist sees themselves.
Q. “Project a Black Planet” features several Chicago artists. Did you know from the start that you wanted to showcase so many local artists? Or did that happen over time?
A. Because of Chicago having a central role in the Pan-African movement, we wanted to honor that by highlighting artists that have been based in our city. And there are many different ways that appears in the exhibition.
We have someone like Kerry James Marshall, who is a titan when it comes to contemporary art in Chicago, so he’s prominently featured in the exhibition. We also have a large set of mural reproductions by Hale Woodruff, who studied at the School of the Art Institute and who lived in Cairo, Ill. We have a large-scale installation by Ebony G. Patterson, an artist who lives between Chicago and Kingston, Jamaica. And then, we have more historical figures like Margaret Burroughs. I mean, there’s a fantastic self-portrait of her in the exhibition appearing alongside an African mask, and Margaret Burroughs, of course, founded the South Side Community Art Center in the 1940s and then 20 years later founded the DuSable Museum. So, we really felt it was important to address the different ways in which Chicago intersects with this global history of Pan-Africanism.
Q. There are hundreds of artifacts from around the world that are displayed here, from album covers to washbasins. Why did you include those items among the paintings and sculptures?
A. Early on in the planning of the exhibition, we knew that the show had to be responsive to the different registers of Pan-Africanist engagement. And when I say registers, essentially, I mean that Pan-Africanism has influenced fine artists, it’s influenced musicians, it’s influenced ordinary people. So, it’s an idea that completely evades hierarchy. There’s no hierarchy to Pan-Africanist expression, irrespective of your social background, your political allegiances, etc. Like, everyone is able to be brought on to a kind of Pan-African stage, essentially. And so, for us, we wanted the exhibition to move between these different registers.
Q. There are themes of decolonization, of self-determination, but there are also themes of joy here, right? How important was it for you to have that showcased in this exhibit, these moments of Black joy and peace and calm?
It was very important for us. I think that oftentimes, when people think about Pan-Africanism, they immediately go to the political. And there are the political sort of engagements represented in the show, for sure. But at the same time, there’s always a sense that political struggle is a way of being able to create space for joy and leisure and freedom. And so, it became important to also show that side of Pan-Africanism, and in the exhibition, it manifests in a range of different ways.
For example, one of the early video works that you encounter by Ilana Harris-Babou is called “Reparation Hardware.” And it’s satirical. It’s funny. There’s a fantastic work by the South African artist Nicholas Hlobo that’s also meant to be humorous and light-hearted in some ways. And then you get to a section called “Interiors,” and you have this incredible wall of paintings and photographs and drawings depicting Black subjects within the spaces of their homes, and that’s a space that is all about comfort. It’s all about familiarity and sociality and joy.
I think the experience of the exhibition is such that you’re moving between these two registers. Every time there’s a set of objects that call up an intense political moment, you’re likely to encounter another object that calls up some experience of leisure or pleasure or joy. So, it’s not a show that dwells heavily in the political or the violent, nor does it dwell heavily in the joyous. It’s about bringing them together and almost giving them equal footing.
Q. What do you want audiences to walk away from this exhibit with?
A. It’s my hope that audiences, when they leave the show, that they have an understanding of just how complex engagements with Pan-Africanism have been throughout the 20th century. This exhibition is the sort of show that rewards visitors who come back … because it is the kind of show that requires close looking and close listening. But also, it requires you to take things away and come back and reflect on them anew.