UNBOUND: Art, Blackness & the Universe, Museum of African Diaspora
Mikael Owunna, ‘The Resurrection of Eke-Nnechukwu,’ 2021
By Tsitsi Michelle
MoAD's UNBOUND: Art, Blackness & the Universe explores Blackness as a site of infinite brilliance. Whether by design or by choice, Blackness (both historically and in contemporary times) has been associated with darkness, inferiority, nothingness, power, the esoteric, and the ethereal. Curated by Key Jo Lee, MoAD's Chief of Curatorial Affairs and Public Programs, the exhibition offers a cosmological framework for thinking about Blackness (the noun, the verb, and the adjective). The mission of the artists represented in this exhibition is to treat blackness as "[...] central to how we understand being, time and the Universe itself". I am happy to report that that is exactly what I experienced and witnessed.
Lee references Stephen Hawking's work as a physicist in the exhibition, noting that black holes are not silent voids. In regard to darkness/blackness, Hawking's work showed that "particle pairs flicker at the horizon: one falls inward, the other escapes outward as faint radiation. A black hole then is not silent but radiant at its edges, alive with unpredictable activity." This thread became the eyes I wore as I was taken on a journey filled with deliciously unpredictable light. The interiority of the works hinged upon the following three core themes, as highlighted at the exhibition:
Geo-Cartographic: Blackness mapped across earthly and celestial terrains.
Religio-Mythic: Blackness as origin, cosmology, and creation story.
Techno-Cyborgian: Blackness as posthuman—shaped by technology, hybridity, and the ability to move fluidly between identities. The posthuman is not one fixed form, but an evolving state of becoming, capable of multiple perspectives.
Blue Turned Temporal, 2019 by Lorna Simpson
There is an intersection between vulnerability and mysticism involved, with each artist's perspective meeting me at the "horizon". The unraveling of the core themes revealed themselves in myriad ways, unfurling Blackness as both tender and edgy, whilst not denying how it can and has been made trendy. Blackness grounds the magic that it possesses without denying its mysterious essence. Consequently, when blackness is pushed to the edge - historically, socially, imaginatively - its brilliance reshapes, reforms and radiates in itself as itself.
UNBOUND invites the observer to rethink how we engage with darkness/blackness. What looks like nothingness or erasure, because of the 'absence' of light, is actually gravity, density and/or vibrational energy living out loud. Blackness is an uncontainable force, an elemental field alive with matter and constantly creating. Matter that takes up space, and in this exhibition, it feels exactly like that as the artists are literally and figuratively taking up space. In so doing, I felt as though I was being reminded, coaxed even, to take up space and to remember that who I am holds a kind of gravitas that is steeped in cosmological memories. Matter is seen as a transformative energy and as a cauldron of memories. Memories that echo from the beyond and keep a watchful eye as well. This invokes a way of seeing that is accessible to me as an individual, and the more I interact with other beings, the more expansive my vision becomes.
Blackness is a binding force for galaxies known and unknown, seen and unseen. It seemed to me that a clear delineation was being made of how the Western imagination has trained people to fear the darkness and blackness alike. Whilst in essence, darkness/blackness is nothing to fear, it is rather something to behold and ultimately surrender to. As I looked at Simpson's art, I understood what looking beyond the veil feels like. I was given a reminder that I exist on many planes, earthly and cosmic alike. And that it serves me well to remember a nonlinear existence of time and space, so that I can continually utilize both my own lived experiences and those of the ancestors, as well as the landscapes and earth as infinite sites of possibility. Their eyes are mine too, which means I have access to this knowledge at all times.
Orishas + Orixas: Afro-Atlantic Spacetime by Gustavo Nazareno
As I stood before the artwork by Mikael Owunna, Lorna Simpson, Gustavo Nazareno, amongst many other immensely talented artists, the word radiant kept vibrating through my body. I felt the pull, the weightiness, and the sensation of being drawn into the void. As my own vastness and undefinable beingness spoke back to me. I noticed I was living out the very intention of the exhibit as I could not separate the cosmic beingness from the earthly Self. I was in the midst of the physics of Beingness. To be in continual relation with forces larger than one's body or biography. To remain surrendered to cosmic intelligence as a site of rebirth and empowerment. A becoming of Self that comes from the ever-expansive inward and outward "flickers".
The exhibit not only elevates Blackness, but it alchemizes both self-imposed and systematic boundaries, thereby turning them into cosmic matter. It insists on the cosmic gaze being what leads the journey of becoming the Self and that Blackness has always been an active horizon with actualized potential. Its beingness is not something to explain, defend, or deny - it is meant to be encountered and witnessed as its radiance cannot be quantified or repudiated. The greatest gift from this exhibit is that it highlights that radiance is not only about that which is visible. It is an amalgamation of ancestral, mythical, and cosmological forces that bind a life together. Darkness/Blackness is not a site of escapism or subjugation, but a place Beingness is fully recognized and actualized.
"The Motherland. Orishas. Black girl magic.The Blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice. God is a woman. Ubuntu, etc." In one way or another, these notions represent how Black people name and reclaim the uncontainable force that is blackness. They are each a radiant piece of the cosmological puzzle of blackness as it is experienced in different parts of this earthly plane. These concepts or epithets are steeped in a kind of darkness, an experience of blackness that is about the separation and displacement of Black bodies. Be it due to colonialism, slavery, wars, misconceptions regarding time, misconceptions regarding the collective as well as the individual black Self, etc, Blackness has forever been changed by violence and disconnection. This exhibition allows for the void to be a balm, to provide multiple ways to let the radiance reintroduce itself and remain a mirror. Memory as a cauldron of memories allows the individual to always remember the multidimensionality of the Self as it is represented through different Afro lived experiences and spiritual traditions, with each Afro culture having its own iteration.
Gustavo Nazareno, ‘The Secret Matrices of Creation,’ 2025
Gustavo Nazareno allows the body (both earthly and ethereal) to be shown through different Afro-spiritual traditions and all the other ways they've evolved, demonstrating that shared Afro lineage enables resilience and the reimagination of the Self. The body remains both a conduit and a landscape of memory through which all that is cosmic is both channelled and personified. The Afro body and blackness in general becomes an opportunity to shapeshift, whilst embodying and imbuing power authentic to each body. This work asked me to wonder about my own authentic Self. What would it be like if there were no veils - time, space, and all that is in between, and I had access to everything, including the gods and goddesses from Afro mythology, all at once, at all times? There is always more to be learned, I whispered to myself. And even more importantly, Owumma's work showcases (and all the other artists really), that 'myth, science and spirit [affirms] the infinite potential of Black existence'.
What is it to possess infinite power that is cloaked by systemic invisibility? What is it to be unbound on the earthly plane, knowing that blackness is bound to be tied up? What is it to contemplate blackness when it is constantly denied or questioned, whilst simultaneously conveniently revered? Blackness is in constant conversation with mythology and mystery, hence it is synonymous with/to the Universe. Listen. My favorite way to start a seismic black experience. Because that one word halts time, provokes what is banal, and insults your sensibilities. It unfurls cosmology, offends colonialism as well as slavery enthusiasts/deniers, and delivers a world-renowned yet unforgiving aspect of blackness, LISTEN. That is what I did in the midst of this brilliance at MoAD.
