FREEQUENCY exhibition at Urban Arts Space. Credit: Courtesy of Diane Kollman
The Afrofuturism movement has been on display for the past month at Ohio State’s Urban Arts Space, located at 50 W. Town St. in downtown Columbus.
Two art exhibitions, titled “FREEQUENCY” and “A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back,” have highlighted the Afrofuturism movement through the work of multiple artists and poets. Though both exhibitions will close Saturday — having opened on May 21 — a few closing activities for the public will unfold this week, according to the Urban Arts Space’s website.
According to the Urban Arts Space’s website, a panel discussion will be held from 6-8 p.m. Thursday featuring two of the artists, Sonja Mañjon and Keya Creenshaw, who will speak about women of color and feminism through art-making practices.
An additional event, called an “Artist Commune,” will take place on Friday, according to the Urban Arts Space’s website. This event will feature a virtual panel of authors from FIYAH magazine — a fiction magazine that celebrates fantasy and sci-fi stories about and by Black authors — who will discuss the topic of Afrofuturism in fiction.
Joni B. Acuff, co-curator and professor of art education at the Urban Arts Space, and gloria j. wilson, co-curator and associate professor of arts administration, education and policy at Ohio State, will moderate Thursday’s panel discussion.
wilson said the “Love Letter” exhibit stems from the 1981 book “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color” by Gloria Analdúa and Cherrie Moraga, which pushed sociocultural boundaries for feminists and women of color at the time.
A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back exhibition at Urban Arts Space. Credit: Courtesy of Le’Ana Christian
“It was considered radical at the time that women of color would be putting forward their voices as a community of shared struggles, towards liberating their voices,” wilson said. “So really, ‘A Love Letter’ is a nod to that very profound and powerful text that continues to be used today in classrooms and in teaching spaces.”
Acuff said not only did the Urban Arts Space want to pay tribute to the book, but also wanted to expand on the feminist messages it speaks on via different art forms.
“It’s one thing to read something and understand it, through literacy, through the text that we have learned to understand as words, but to spirit experience it in this more visceral way, to be in a space where a piece of work can offer a different emotional response and a different type of understanding, that surpasses the limitations of words,” Acuff said.
The exhibit’s featured artists are also artists featured in the book, wilson said. There was another level of importance to expanding on not just the text in the book but the art as well, wilson said.
“What’s really beautiful about this exhibit is it allows the work to live in the manner that the artists perhaps, may have envisioned and maybe in ways that the artists hasn’t envisioned,” wilson said.
wilson said this mission — to expand on deeper topics through art — has taken them down various paths including different forms of digital work and experiences called “sound showers,” which allow attendees to move their bodies in a specific space and hear the author speaking to them.
Acuff and wilson agreed that one of the exhibit’s main goals was creating an experience that all generations could enjoy.
“The subject matter requires you to consider generational lineage, like things that have started before you and you know what will happen after you because you are acknowledging that it’s still present in your life,” Acuff said.
This idea of past, present and future is a fundamental part of Afrofuturism and has likewise impacted the other art exhibit “FREEQUENCY,” said Terron Banner, manager of community learning and experience at Ohio State’s Urban Arts Space and lecturer in the department of arts administration, education and policy.
“We intentionally created this kind of collaboration where we’re able to reach out to all these different communities, these insular communities, within the larger Black community,” Banner said.
FREEQUENCY exhibition with a photo series by Ky Smiley. Credit: Courtesy of Nate Tyler
Banner said both exhibits complement each other by way of displaying Afrofuturism’s core ideals.
“What ‘A Love Letter’ is looking at is specifically women of color, and feminist theory,” Banner said. “Afrofuturism was all built into it, what if we looked at it from a feminist perspective, whereas ‘FREEQUENCY’ is Afrofuturism not only from a feminist perspective, but also from an intersectional, non-binary, multi-generational perspective as well.”
Banner said the “FREEQUENCY” exhibition involves over 20 visual artists and one poet.
Working with FIYAH, Banner said, has been a great way to showcase Afrofuturism for the Artist Commune event this Friday.
“It is built on that collaborative model, right around this Black experience, our futurism,” Banner said. “It was an organic kind of happening; it was an authentic connection, and it just made sense to have it.”
Banner said that the Urban Arts Space is trying to achieve the goals of Afrofuturism — to create mental images that support and create new possibilities — through these events.
“The importance of this exhibition, and this Artist Commune, is just to continue to push the sense of possibility for the current and future generations to continue to support and promote a sense of purpose, a sense of direction, and to help guide them to do things that haven’t really been explored before,” Banner said.
Additional details, including how to RSVP for the described events, are available on the Urban Arts Space’s website.
